| Maker(s): | Gilfert, George
| | Culture: | American
| | Title: | piano
| | Date Made: | 1805-1810
| | Type: | Musical Instrument, Furniture
| | Materials: | wood: mahogany, white pine, cherry, spruce, ash, yellow-poplar, birch, red maple, red oak, holly, satinwood; base metal: brass; ivory
| | Place Made: | United States; New York; New York City
| | Measurements: | overall: h: 33 3/4 w: 66 1/2 d: 24 1/4 in.
| | Accession Number: | HD 2003.21.2
| | Credit Line: | Gift of the Estate of Mrs. W. Scott Cluett
| | Museum Collection: | Historic Deerfield
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Description:
Veneered piano case with the Instrument by George Gilfert and an unknown cabinetmaker, which is not in playing order. From note of Dean A. Fales Jr.: "George Gilfert, New York piano maker. In the 1796-7 New York City Directory, Gilfert was listed as an organist and the proprietor of a musical magazine. From 1799-1805 he was listed as proprietor of a musical magazine at several addresses on Broadway and in 1805 on 13 Maiden Lane. From 1806-1814, he was listed as having a pianoforte warehouse at 13 Maiden Lane, and the 1815 Directory lists a widow Gilfert. Considering dates of publication of these directories he seems to to have made pianos between 1805-1814. One example is at Deerfield and an almost identical one owned by Mr. & Mrs. Dean A. Fales, Jr. George Alfred Cluett (1873-1955), of Troy, New York, and Williamstown, Massachusetts, collected American furniture from around 1901, shortly after he and Edith Tucker were married, through the mid-1920s. Cluett was prominent among early collectors. For the first museum exhibition of American furniture, The Hudson-Fulton Exhibition, opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1909, Cluett loaned 22 objects. Cluett, whose family business became Arrow Shirts, finished collecting before Henry Francis DuPont began to amass objects for what became the core of the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. The Cluett family donated most of its collection to Historic Deerfield beginning in 1960, with its last gifts given in 2003. Cluett’s keen connoisseurship, focused on Classical objects (contemporary to his grandparents’ lives) is notable as he collected before the publication of the first seminal reference books on American antiques. Moreover, the early twentieth-century collectors focused on the so-called Pilgrim Century, which predates the Classical era by over one hundred years. Cluett was particularly intrigued by the work of craftsmen including Seymour, McIntire, Phyfe, and Lannuier. Cluett’s desire for privacy, and reverence for times past has long obscured his creative connoisseurship and legacy as one of the earliest and influential collectors of American furniture.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2003.21.2 |
