Last Saturday (28 May 22), Jess and I participated in a “behind the ropes” tour of the Hammond-Harwood House museum in downtown Annapolis right next to the Naval Academy and St. John’s College. The tour, arranged by the local chapter of the Society for American Period Furniture Makers (SAPFM), ran from 10am to noon and was attended by about a dozen members and 3 or 4 spouses.
The museum opens to the public at noon, so we had the run of the place for two hours with a docent Dana Connett. She was a great sport and seemed really happy to have such an interested audience testing her knowledge of the collection (i.e., asking a bunch of weird questions about the furniture.The focus of the tour was the furniture and some or the architectural elements (wood trim, doors, molding, etc.)
Don’t let the term “House” fool you, it’s a several thousand square foot Anglo-Palladian mansion begun in 1774 by architect William Buckland for Matthias Hammond. It was continuously occupied into the 1920s before last descendant died and the property was purchased by the adjacent St. John’s College before being purchased by the association that continues to operate it as a museum in 1940. Though the original lot was 10 acres(!), it retains only 3/4 of an acre today.
The Hammond-Harwood House (hereafter, HHH) is considered one of the best preserved colonial era houses in America. The museum has actively pursued amassing a collection of late 18th Century furniture and presenting it as it would have appeared in the late 1770s. Their collection features an impressive number of pieces by the Annapolis cabinetmaker John Shaw. Shaw’s work is an agreeable transition between Chippendale and Federal styles. He is one of the better known cabinetmaker’s of the late 18th Century where his prolific shop, situated right on State Circle, produced much of the furniture for the Maryland State House (and one-time capitol of the United States).
The leaders of the local chapter of SAPFM managed to earn the trust of the curator and we had permission to handle (with gloves) any of the furniture as long as we didn’t move any of the stuff on it around (the furniture often has other period items arranged on them). They also allowed us to photograph and measure anything we wanted. That’s becoming a rarity these days, especially from these smaller, private museums.
Many of them supplement their income by licensing the rights to some or all of their collection to commercial shops (VMI and Colonial Williamsburg are examples) whose terms forbid reproduction by anyone else. And many of the folks in this organization are way better builders than I am and are quite capable of making museum quality reproductions. Though, as a my wife calls them ‘a bunch of old white guys’, they are hardly capable of producing anything in quantity such that they would be competition. So mostly those prohibitions only serve to frustrate furniture geeks that collection pictures and measurements against ‘one of these days’ when they might make something like this.
In any case, knowing cameras were fine, I drug out the Nikon D810 for the event. It takes really awesome pictures, but is so damn heavy (~4.5 lbs). After 6 or 7 hours of hauling it around on foot in Annapolis, my back was shot. And, I wasn’t even carrying an extra battery. Just the camera body with my favorite all purpose walking around lens, the Tamron 35-150mm f/2.8-4. The lens is a little on the heavy side, but provides a nice zoom range for when you’re going to be in different situations and don’t want to carry a bag full of lenses (and I definitely did not).
I didn’t take a ton of shots. Better photographers than me have shot the house and all the pieces, I was mostly interested in capturing details that you don’t normally see up close. Besides, Chippendale isn’t really my thing in terms of stuff I want to build, but I like learning about the various other styles too. The shots are broken up into little galleries to avoid a wall of pictures and so I can find the shots late. Enjoy.
Chairs
The house sports an interesting variety of chairs, the formal areas have Chippendale type chairs as you would expect. There’s an uncommon example of a Campeche chair popularized by Thomas Jefferson. The working areas had a more typical (working class) ladder-back chair. The game room had an unusual chair, I captured several pictures of that for future research.
Clocks
The house had 3 clocks on display. I am told they have many more. There is even a program this summer with an actual horologist at the museum. I might attend if I am free then.
There’s a tall case clock in the kitchen, a smaller case clock in the downstairs hallway and near the entrance, an amazing brass English lantern clock c.1650.
Details of Period Furniture
Odds and ends of carving, inlay and brass work that caught my eye.
Exterior Details
I rather like the fence on the Chase-Lloyd house across the street. The attention to detail in the design and construction is emblematic of what’s missing from the soulless modern construction. The Front Entrance is pretty impressive, the carving is all wood. The oak doors are painted to resemble mahogany (this was the original finish).
Miscellaneous Interesting Things
Random stuff that caught my eye: a nice Chippendale mirror is in the room where tours start from. Very intriguing is the small (~30″ high) wall cabinet in the kitchen area. It’s Eastern PA, probably 1820-1830. There’s a small chest situated under a dresser in the master bedroom, also English and later period. The wine bottle caddy was also quite interesting. These smaller material culture items are not sufficiently studied IMO. Everyone is all about the big impressive pieces, but a lot more goes into furnishing a house than those items.
Tables and Drawer Details
Interesting details from the many (many) small tables located throughout the house. The docent admitted that they have 35 Pembroke tables in storage. They plan to auction off a lot of them to get them into hand that will appreciate them and raise the always needed revenue.
This is just a sampling of the museum, it’s really a nice collection. I highly recommend a visit if you find yourself in Annapolis looking to a hit of 18th Century world.