Tracey Parks on Tennessee Furniture

Welcome to our inaugural podcast!  Today we welcome Tracey Parks. Tracey is an avid student and collector of Tennessee decorative arts, and for the past thirty five years his research has specialized in the study of the furniture makers of the Volunteer state working before 1840. His in-depth investigation of the subject seeks to reveal the lives of craftsmen in context with their work and the world through which they moved. We will talk with Tracey about how he became interested in Tennessee furniture, his work editing the groundbreaking The Art and  Mystery of Tennessee Furniture, his support for MESDA, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Art, and his thoughts about furniture on the auction market. 

Transcript

Celia Walker 0:05

Welcome to Made in Tennessee, the podcast that brings you information about fine and decorative arts and the stories they tell about Tennessee's history. I'm Celia Walker, along with Sarah Campbell Drury, who's Vice President of Fine and Decorative Arts at Case Auctions, and we're thrilled to have you join us on this inaugural podcast. We hope you like the program and that you'll tune back in for upcoming shows on other topics intended to connect our listeners, that's you, with cultural heritage objects that deepen their understanding of the impressive history of Tennessee's culture. Sarah and I believe that by understanding the evolution and process behind our state's culture, we learn more about our own lives.

Sarah Campbell Drury 0:46

That's right, Celia. And by the way, Celia has a very long history in the fine and decorative arts tradition in Tennessee and has worked at Cheekwood and at Vanderbilt, where she currently is. And I'm just thrilled to be here. I'm especially thrilled to welcome Tracey Parks, who is an avid student and collector of Tennessee Decorative Arts. For the past 35 years, his research has specialized in the study of the furniture makers of the volunteer state working before 1840. Tracey edited The Art and Mystery of Tennessee Furniture and its makers through 1850, which is the Bible of Tennessee Furniture for those of us who love it. It was published all the way back in 1988. And it was, at the time and remains, I think, the first comprehensive book on the topic. He's also contributed articles, essays, all of those, and speaks frequently on the topic of Tennessee decorative arts, especially Tennessee furniture of the antebellum era. So and when I told Tracey that we were inviting him to a podcast about Tennessee decorative arts, he laughed and laughed because he said, you know, this is a very visual thing that you're asking me to speak about, and this is a podcast. But we we feel confident that what we're gonna be talking about is the history and the impact and the context of Tennessee Decorative Arts, and we will give you ways to see some of these objects. But first, Tracey, um tell us a little bit about how you became interested in Southern furniture.

C. Tracey Parks 2:14

I think that's a little bit of a nature nurture kind of situation. So growing up, I grew up here in Davidson County and didn't get out of the county until I was a teenager. But my father had been in the grocery business, my mother worked for Commerce Union Bank, and at some point he became a little bit disillusioned with the grocery business, and they had kind of started a little side business on the side at the time, a lot of mom and pop operations at the time. People were buying older furniture antiques, refinishing those, selling those. So they got into that business, and that grew over time, and I was exposed to older furniture, and I became interested in it. And as nerdy as this sounds, I started looking at books in my, you know, uh young younger years and started reading things and became fascinated with the idea that of furniture being produced in different parts of our country, how it looked different in different parts of the country. And that ultimately led me to discover what we had that was local in nature. And that really drove me uh into wanting to study that, wanting to understand it.

Celia Walker 3:20

We're so grateful you did. I I think your research has been instrumental in the growth of interest and knowledge around Tennessee furniture makers in particular, and the art and mystery of Tennessee furniture, that book by Dorita Coleman Williams and Nathan Harsh, is probably the most frequently cited resource on the subject. That book drew on census records and primary research to create a baseline of known cabinet makers and chairmakers working in Tennessee before 1850. Tell us a little bit, if you will, Tracey, about how that project came to be.

C. Tracey Parks 3:52

Well, okay, so if we go back in time a little bit, uh in 1972, and and I'm in elementary school at this point, so uh but in 1972, Cheekwood put on uh the first really comprehensive exhibit of Tennessee Decorative Arts. So it included furniture, textiles, pottery, portraits, paintings, uh, and metal wares, silver, and that was really the first statewide uh addressing of what we had that was made here. And contemporaneous with that, there was a publication in the Antiques magazine, Magazine Antiques, which is still published, which was a checklist of Tennessee cabinet makers, and that was put together by the same group that was doing the Cheekwood exhibit. So fast forward to the late 70s, early 80s, uh. Nathan Harsh, who is uh now deceased but an attorney at the time in Sumner County, Tennessee, was an avid collector of furniture mostly, and local furniture especially, and Nathan began to start to document things that he was aware of, especially things that have come down in families and had local histories. So he's going around different homes, knocking on doors, getting to know people, and starting to make a record. Preceding that, way over in North Carolina in Winston-Salem in 1965, Frank Horton had created a museum called the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts. And Frank not not only wanted to display objects made throughout the South at that time, things that he could say were made primarily before 1820, but he wanted to also create a database to show people that certain craftsmen were working in certain areas. And he also wanted to include a photographic database recording objects that were made in the South. So about 1981, 82, 83, they do field research in Tennessee. And uh Frank, uh the founder of the museum, was instrumental in his philosophy about this was who would be the most effective to go out and do this and be able to communicate. And he found mostly younger women who had graduated uh from college or maybe master's programs who were interested in the decorative arts. A lot of them were going into interior design and different things like that, so had somewhat of a background, who he thought could go into civic groups and things and get to know people and then get into collections and make some sort of uh connection and get you know, do some field research. That happened, and uh they were in Tennessee, I think, in 83 and 84, photographing. So Dorita Williams was the field researcher for Tennessee, so working for the museum became the recorder of those objects in Tennessee. Nathan was also simultaneously, and actually a little bit before Mesa's research, documenting objects, especially in Middle Tennessee. And when we say Tennessee at this time, it's just East Tennessee and Middle, and no one got all the way over into West Tennessee. It was primarily just those two areas. So they worked together and had the idea, Nathan wanted to produce a book, so they kind of joined forces. I came on board about 1984, I think, um, and uh I was tasked with um putting together a checklist. We wanted to go through 1850. The original checklist published in the magazine Antiques only stopped at 1840, so that sent me to the library and archives for many, many Saturdays, reading all the newspapers that were published in that decade. And also went back and discovered that some issues of newspapers that were in existence back when the research was done in the 70s for the Cheekwood exhibit, new editions of papers have been discovered. So I'm reading things and picking up new cabinet makers or cabinet makers that we hadn't picked up before, expanding that list. So that's kind of how it came about. And then it took us another four years or so of collectively working towards the project to get it to publication. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Celia Walker 8:02

And you'll ended up finding 300 or more names of people who were creating furniture, right, in in Tennessee at that time?

C. Tracey Parks 8:09

Well, the total checklist, and it's been a while since I counted it, but I think we're a little over 1,800. And it includes cabinet makers, and I think our list has chairmakers and there's occasionally a wheelwright. Some people in there we're not certain they're cabinet makers. You might read an inventory. So if someone dies now, but especially if someone died back in the 19th century and earlier, and they died without a will, the person in charge of their estate would be tasked with recording what they owned and writing an inventory. And that inventory is recorded in probate books here throughout Tennessee. So you would look to those, and oftentimes one of the things you find is who made someone's coffin, who gets paid for that. And very often the person being paid for that work is either a carpenter or a cabinet maker. A lot of times it's a cabinet maker. And a lot of times, that's the only way that you know a person in a particular community is a woodworker because they didn't advertise, or if they did advertise, there's no paper surviving that you could read that ad from. And that's how we sort of build that list.

Celia Walker 9:23

But as we have more and more newspapers digitized by libraries, and it seems like we can just continue to grow that, maybe.

C. Tracey Parks 9:32

Yes. Currently you've got, I think uh you can use uh newspapers.com, but you're limited to whatever newspapers they have already put into that. And that's good because that database is searchable. Kentucky has digitized a lot of their papers, and I'm a little frustrated because I don't think we have that option uh here in Tennessee. Ours were microfilmed, which is great that they're not lost, but if you don't have the original newspapers, you can't go back and digitize them. And that microfilm is getting kind of old and difficult to read in some cases, and in some cases it wasn't the best image taken. So we might be a little bit of limitations there for us as researchers about what we can actually use. But yes, it's it's constant. You think everything's lost, it's not necessarily lost. There's there's lots of material out there to work from.

Sarah Campbell Drury 10:23

So what are the chances for a sequel to the art and mystery of Tennessee Furniture?

C. Tracey Parks 10:27

Well, I think a sequel is very unlikely. I'm personally working on producing a book that deals with the cabinet-making trade. And my well, I'll just say this. I've learned this about myself. I really like the research. It's much more difficult to make yourself sit down and collate all the data and produce something that maybe a reader could enjoy. But I'm trying to force myself into that second, second part of that scenario.

Sarah Campbell Drury 11:03

So when we talk about exhibits that have been, you know, important. You talked about the one at Cheekwood back in the 70s. There was the Art of Tennessee in 2006, which highlighted a lot of really fine examples of Tennessee furniture. And then there was also a recent exhibit at the Tennessee State Museum. Candace Candido was one of the important curators for that. And it kind of helped bring in some new examples of furniture. And one of those that was so striking was the Moses Crawford desk and book case, also known as a secretary. And Moses Crawford is someone that you have really done a lot of research on. Can you tell us a little bit more about him?

C. Tracey Parks 11:44

Right. I I actually found that desk and book case. It was misidentified and sold out of out of Tennessee, and I just knew what it was when I saw it. So uh Crawford is interesting. We we recorded him as a cabinet maker in our checklist when we published in 1988. And we knew he was a cabinet maker by the fact that when he dies in 1819 in Knox County, he leaves an inventory and it lists a set of cabinet makers' tools. And it also lists, I think, a lot of beechwood used for making planes. So he was not only building furniture, but he was actually making tools as well to to make his furniture. And there was a l corner cupboard, uh pretty fantastic architecturally significant corner cupboard that's in the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, MESDA, uh over in Winston-Salem, which had a really significant history that that dated it back to the 1840s in Knox County, connected with two Scots-Irish families. And that was known when it came into the collection. But no one had really investigated where it might have, you know, what its history might have been leading up to those two families having it in the n in the 1840s. And I became interested in kind of investigating that. And very early on in the investigation, uh Moses Crawford came back into my focus. He was living on the same creek as these people, just within a half a mile or so, and I discovered within hours of kind of investigating it, that he was actually buried in there in the McCampbell family cemetery, which is one of these families. And I thought, well, that seems to be an unlikely coincidence that that he isn't somehow connected with this group of furniture. And it wasn't just the corner cupboard in the museum, but it was uh multiple corner cupboards, another desk and bookcase, chest of drawers, all these pieces of furniture that we could tie together and know that they came out of one particular shop. But whose shop was it? And as I began to investigate Crawford, I found the interesting story that he actually was the maker. And most likely one of his kinsmen, possibly his brother, John, who lived within that mile or so of the McCampbells who had owned the cupboard at one time. Probably John was the original owner of the corner cupboard. So it was probably the cabinet maker brother making it for his his brother. And John was an interesting figure who shows up at the first state convention. Uh he's also a militia leader up in Knox County in the 1790s, but largely had faded away from any of our historical uh knowledge about him.

Celia Walker 14:35

So you talked uh about a book here. You've you teased us with a book you're getting you're working on.

C. Tracey Parks 14:40

I've been teasing people for about 13 years about this, so don't feel too teased.

Celia Walker 14:44

What what are you reading now? What new scholarship interests you?

C. Tracey Parks 14:47

Well, I read a lot of primary materials. Uh I'm currently rereading some Nashville newspapers from the 1815, so I'm stuck in the uh War of 1812 at the moment, but I'm looking to see who's who's present, what these cabinet makers are advertising about here in Nashville. Uh but I'm also doing some light reading. I think I just finished an article on Thomas Jefferson's New York furniture. Uh Thomas Jefferson's a famous Virginian, he's a president. Uh why does he own New York furniture? Well, when he's uh Secretary of State, he's camped out in New York City for a while as Secretary of State when the Capitol is there, and uh he buys furniture from a couple of New York makers. And for years, this furniture that has descended down through the Jefferson family, some of which is at Monticello, some uh a particular piece I think is owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society, and other pieces might be privately owned, and some pieces have been lost. But it's the furniture at Monticello has been thought to be mid-Atlantic, possibly New York, possibly Philadelphia. And they knew that Jefferson had a receipt where he paid some New York cabinet makers at this time period, but what they didn't have was a receipt that kind of showed all the furniture on on one ledger. That was discovered, as it turns out, from this article in 2007. And that particular sheet is a packing sheet in which Jefferson has meticulously set forth not only the identity of each object, but uh dimensionally the size of crate he wants it to be put in. And so they've applied mathematics and looked at, you know, the cubic footage of each of these crates and could discern and put together what's in the collection that matches it and can make these attributions now to particular New York cabinet makers. So I call that light reading, but that to me is very enjoyable because it's a lot of really good primary research from documents and using what we think we know and comparing to things we know, and then revisiting what we thought we knew in the past and kind of changing some attributions.

Sarah Campbell Drury 17:00

So there's the mystery of furniture. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: There's a lot of mystery. And you're like a detective in many ways.

C. Tracey Parks 17:05

It really is. And and it is I don't read novels, detective stories, but I think I do kind of in my avocational life pursue that. I'm fascinated by uncovering stories.

Sarah Campbell Drury 17:17

And your passion for Tennessee furniture is pretty much unmatched. I mean, you really are first in class in your desire to research and um and know these pieces. But I hope that one of our hopes for Celia and I is that this podcast will help excite a desire among other people, you know, to really engage with Tennessee furniture and develop a passion for it like we have. And so one thing I think that it's important for us to talk about for someone who might be newer to the world of Tennessee furniture, how do you identify Tennessee furniture? What are some characteristics to look for if you're just starting out on this journey? What advice would you give?

C. Tracey Parks 17:59

Well, if I'm collecting, my advice is always buy the best thing that you can afford, but only buy something you really like. You shouldn't buy something as an investment, in my opinion, because you're going to live with it in your home, and it should be something that that you enjoy looking at. That's that's the pleasure I get out of it. And there are some things in in our world, uh you might walk up to a chest of drawers, and you know, basically the description for any chest of drawers is basically it's a it's a cabinet and it has drawers that slide out of it, and it probably has some type of leg that lifts it off the floor. That could be a bracket foot, it could be a turned foot, it could be an ogee foot, it could be lots of different things. But a chest of drawers is a chest of drawers. But you can have a mid-century chest of drawers and it's a chest of drawers, or you could have a Chippendale chest of drawers. It's still functionally the same thing, but they're very different. So that same difference applies kind of across the geographical board from which we look at. So if I were to take you to 1810 Philadelphia, you're probably gonna go into every shop in Philadelphia in 1810 and see almost exactly the same things. Now they're going to be kind of graded. You're gonna see some entry-level chest of drawers. It's fairly plain, maybe a local wood, something like that, and then some that someone a patron might pay more for that maybe has some additional carving and things like that. But they're all functionally the same object.

Sarah Campbell Drury 19:23

So maybe you've got a flat front for your entry level versus a serpentine front on your more exciting example.

C. Tracey Parks 19:30

So maybe it's kind of like cars. You know, if we we go out into the parking lot here, we can probably pick out the same make and model, and somebody paid for extras, whether they're extra wheels or uh extra, you know, interior features. And they they're both cars. They look pretty similar driving down the road, but they're quite a bit different in terms of costliness. But they have the same function.

Sarah Campbell Drury 19:52

And ironically, a lot of the wealthier people back in, say, 1810, who wanted a chest of drawers might go to Philadelphia, even if they lived in Tennessee, they might have it brought in or they might go and acquire it. But the Tennessee chest today might be a little bit more desirable, especially if it has something like inlay, um, an interesting provenance. But we're looking at things like the secondary woods, right, to help us distinguish a Tennessee piece from a Philadelphia piece.

C. Tracey Parks 20:23

Yes and no, because in Philadelphia you're going to have poplar as a secondary wood. Tennessee, you're going to have poplar as a secondary wood. In Philadelphia, you might have uh white pine also creeping in occasionally, but a lot of poplar. Uh in Middle Tennessee here, where poplar is almost exclusively our secondary wood. And by secondary, we mean the parts of the case that aren't seen. So uh if a primary would be the exterior of the case. It could be cherry or it could be imported mahogany, it could be walnut, uh something like that. But the interior would be, we pull the drawer out, what are the drawer sides made of, what's the bottom made of, what's the uh that that's going to be the secondary wood, and what are the components that kind of hold that case together, that's the secondary wood. So we couldn't just judge it on the on that. Uh so we we can exclude things. So yellow pine typically is used as a secondary wood in eastern Tennessee and some in western Tennessee, rarely seen in Middle Tennessee, especially not here in the central or Nashville basin. So if I were to go into a collection and someone was to show me something that they thought had come down through their family and they were insistent that it was made right here in Nashville and it had yellow pine secondary wood, I would be very surprised. And I would probably think that maybe they might possibly have their family history wrong, and it might come down a branch that didn't come out of right here in Nashville. Family histories are never wrong, Tracey, right? Well, they're a great place to start, but they're they're oftentimes not complete, and many times they don't. They may take us in a direction that's helpful for us to ascertain the truth. And of course, it's all speculative most of the time because we don't have things that are signed very often by a cabinet maker. That's the greatest thing in the world. And even that can be misleading. An example would be the State Museum has two pieces made by the same cabinet maker about twelve years apart. One that they bought back in the 80s is a very spectacular carved classical secretary. So if you imagine a chest of drawers and the upper drawer is serpentine and it folds down to have a writing surface in it. And it's made by a fellow named John Earhart Rose. And if you were to pull that big writing desk drawer out, you would find on the beneath the top, where you couldn't see it except for removing that, an inscription that says, made by John E. Rose from East Tennessee. And I'm going to lie about the date here, I guess, because it's March something, I think, 1833. That was for many years said to be made in East Tennessee. And I have been a skeptic from the very get-go about that because it uses the word from East Tennessee. So in Knoxville, we know is in East Tennessee. Why, if you're in East Tennessee, would you say you're from East Tennessee? We know Rose actually trained in Philadelphia. We know he was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. And at some point he made his way down through Virginia, worked in Abington, just over the line from Upper East Tennessee for a while, and then came to Knoxville in the late 1820s, 1830s. This piece has white pine, which I don't see as a secondary wood, and it is this very dense mahogany veneer, which we brought in mahogany. It's in uh mahogany's all a tropical wood, so it's imported into port cities and then brought inland to places like Nashville, or Knoxville in this case. But I thought that that just doesn't make sense. So fast forward twenty-some odd years, the State Museum acquires a second piece, and this is signed John E. Rose White Settlement, 1824. Well, Knoxville was created as White Settlement to start with. I had not seen that name going forward so long in history, but he must have been with a group of people that still kind of refer to that part of Knoxville he was in by that by that you know by that use. But the Knoxville piece, the 1824 piece, clearly the same cabinet maker. You can see lots of his signature uh idiosyncrasies in what's being built. But the Knoxville piece is cherry on yellow pine and poplar, a combination that we see so often in furniture from the Knoxville region. So what we have here, what State Museum has is a is a great example of a local-made piece by a cabinet maker trained not here in Tennessee, but up in Philadelphia, who comes to Tennessee in Pennsylvania, where he is in 1833, he's building pieces using local woods there and in imported mahogany. And when he gets to Tennessee, he's using local woods like cherry, wild, you know, wild cherry that's cut from the forest right around Knoxville, and using secondary woods like yellow pine and poplar.

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Sarah Campbell Drury 25:35

One more question about secondary woods. What do you see in West Tennessee furniture?

C. Tracey Parks 25:40

Well, we don't see a lot of West Tennessee furniture, first of all. So West Tennessee, as you know, is is not settled until after 1819 in large part. And of course, there's a big rush by Middle Tennesseans to create Memphis about that same time period. And because Memphis is right on the river, and because that is also contemporaneous with the advent of the steamboat, all of a sudden you have goods moving up and down the Mississippi and all the way up into the Ohio River. So there's a lot of import, imported uh furniture that comes into Memphis at an early state. Now that's not to say that native goods aren't made in West Tennessee, they certainly are. But our understanding of West Tennessee because it was less populous and because of the timing of that its creation is about the time when we're in the steamboat era, it's much more difficult to find groups of furniture in West Tennessee. But poplar shows up, cypress occasionally shows up because you have that growing in the swamplands in in the Delta part of West Tennessee. And there's a little bit of yellow pine.

Celia Walker 26:52

So you've you've talked about how the wonderful resources at the Tennessee State Museum furniture. Mike Bell, who did a lot of work in developing that collection before Candace came on. But I also want to circle back to MESDA. It's such an amazing resource. Even if you're not able to go to Winston-Salem, the database has a lot of material for that's that's useful for research. They're very generous with their sharing. But tell me a little bit about how you got involved with MESDA and the MESDA, the Tennessee Room.

C. Tracey Parks 27:22

Well, okay. I I guess this uh gets back to a collecting kind of situation. I am at an auction over in Asheville, and I'm either in I think I'm in line maybe to pay for something. And I turn around and happen to engage in a conversation. It happened to be Robert Leith, who was the then director. He'd he'd been at the museum probably for two years at that point and was trying to make some differences and changes. He says, I've been wanting to meet you. I said, Well, I've been wanting to meet you too. And uh the next thing I know, he's uh in Nashville. We have a nice visit, we discuss things very soon thereafter. I'm elected to the advisory board, which is a group of either scholars, collectors, people interested in Southern decorative arts. Uh and it's it's non-paid for, but it's there to try to facilitate helping the museum and giving some guidance, I guess. So it was very very much an honorific to get to to get to do that, and I g appreciated that greatly. I happened to be chairing the board in 2015, and that was the 50th anniversary for the museum, and for a couple of years leading up to that, Robert had this vision of changing the museum in a very positive way, kind of modernizing it in a in a good and insightful way. And by say modernizing, so if you went to the museum in its first iteration, it was a series of historic rooms, and you kind of walked through the setting with a docent or guide, oftentimes with a flashlight, because it was dim because you didn't have lighting, uh uh modern lighting in the old days, and would kind of point out things uh with a flashlight and talk about them and move you through. He had the vision that it was largely an art museum and we ought to be able to see the things that we're talking about. So uh there was uh a push to uh analytically look at those interiors, see are we presenting the correct colors as these rooms are installed? Uh should we really put in new lighting? Should we highlight those things? Those things got done. We did not have a Tennessee room at that time when these discussions began. And um I thought that that was kind of important that we do Tennessee and Kentucky, way out here in the West, way west of North Carolina, although there were pieces in the collection, had never really gotten a show place. And they agreed to let one of the rooms kind of be turned over to Tennessee, and um we were talking about how we would decorate that, and uh somebody, I think it might have been me, had the silly idea to mention that, you know, we don't have any stenciling on any walls here. Stenciling was a big thing in the 1820s and 30s. The next thing I know, uh I looked checked on it today, this month, twelve years ago, my wife and I were suddenly on ladders with stenciling uh material, having neither of us ever stenciled any rooms before, and suddenly are uh copying a stencil that's present here in Middle Tennessee at Cragfont and Hawthorne Hill over in Sumner County, and we're copying those on the in the Tennessee room. The Tennessee room is a little heavy on East Tennessee. It has some Middle Tennessee pieces, and I think maybe one thing from West Tennessee. But it is now a room that you can go in and start to look at some great objects that were produced here and made in Tennessee.

Sarah Campbell Drury 30:51

Definitely worth the trip.

C. Tracey Parks 30:53

Oh, w well worth the trip.

Sarah Campbell Drury 30:55

Let's talk about the market for Tennessee furniture. I mean, ostensibly, if people are interested in Tennessee furniture, they might want to actually own a piece of it. And um, Tracey, I'd love to get your your take on, you know, are there really good pieces that are coming available? And um how do you feel about the market and desirability of Tennessee furniture?

C. Tracey Parks 31:16

Well, you know, markets are funny things, I think, in my opinion. A lot of times it depends on the who's selling, when they're selling. A lot of times provenance figures pretty heavily. There are you you could go out and buy something that authentically was made in Tennessee today in any market almost and find something, I guess. But what I think is especially sought after are the higher quality examples from our region. And I think that's what museums or or collectors are primarily looking for. And in my opinion, it's always pretty competitive when when those objects happen to come upon come into the market. And of course, it largely depends on the aesthetics. How pretty is this thing? Because in my personal world, I don't care how well documented it is if it's not uh not aesthetically pleasing. I think it should be something that you enjoy seeing, first of all. And then if it has this additional boost of being well-documented, that's great.

Celia Walker 32:20

Well, and conditioned is also incredibly important.

C. Tracey Parks 32:23

So I mean you would probably walk away from a good piece or an attractive piece if it had a lot of restorations that it would be so sad because you just struggle and think, why can't I love this thing because it has this terrible defect or whatever. But you but you want to try to document it, at least from my perspective, because not everything travels through time unscathed. That that's the rarest thing when you find an object that manages to be with us for maybe two centuries or sometimes longer. For Tennessee, two centuries would be a long time, obviously. But there are objects that have been well cared for, uh enjoyed by families who who've taken steps not to harm that object and maybe not refinish it. You might even have something that shows up with uh an original finish from time to time, which is especially nice to see.

Sarah Campbell Drury 33:18

So at Case we had a Moses Crawford corner cupboard uh come up a few years ago that sold for about $ 21,000. And that, you know, was it's hard sometimes when we're looking for comps with Tennessee furniture because you might not have that many corner cupboards that are spectacular in terms of, you know, a great cornice and you know beautiful condition and and good provenance. It's hard to find a piece that kind of is a perfect tin on all of those.

C. Tracey Parks 33:48

Well, and and and you make a that that was only the second, uh, I guess, glazed or glass door version from that shop, and that one had especially nice feet on it, but it had had a pretty significant alteration. It had lost uh uh uh two drawers in the middle there. And and that hadn't been a recent change, that had probably happened well over a century ago. It was easily detectable if you were there and looking at it closely, but I don't think you would have walked up to it and noticed that. I noticed it immediately because every single corner cupboard that I've ever seen from that shop has two drawers side by side in the middle over the lower doors. So it struck out to me very quickly that, oh, this is different. Why is this different? And uh but it was a beautiful piece and brought up brought a not nice. It doesn't hurt when you have an article that talks about a maker, does it?

Sarah Campbell Drury 34:36

Oh, that always helps, yes. Context is everything. I'm reminded, too, of the the Bergner desk that again Case sold uh a couple of years ago. That piece was actually found in Colorado. And the owner um decided that it might sell better in Tennessee than if he were to try to sell it in Colorado. So he he called us and we brought that to market, and that sold for I think around $65,000. And um, the buyer was the State Museum, and it it ended up being in the exhibit. And it was so cool because when you opened it up, there was actually a a a stringed instrument inside the desk. So it was not just something you wrote on, you could play on it as well.

C. Tracey Parks 35:18

Well, you couldn't play on it. It it it made uh it str it strummed across something as as uh like like a little zither or something as you open it. And that's not the first time this maker did this. So I think it's John C. Bergner. Does that sound right?

Sarah Campbell Drury 35:31

It does, yeah.

C. Tracey Parks 35:32

So this is dated 1819. And his day book, so in other words, his record for actually making furniture for a time period exists. And it's interesting, that piece has a label, a paper label, which is rare in Tennessee, that says it was made for and it lists the fellow it was made for and says John C. Bergner, I think it's 1819. And uh that's not the first time he'd used that particular musical device. He used it in a sideboard that he made about that same time period. And as it turns out, if you learn more about Bergner, he actually played a fiddle or violin. So he's a musician. And I think this is him just kind of working into his furniture something that he loves. I think Dan Ackerman has written a pretty lengthy article looking at the day book that's in in um it's in the MESDA Journal. So you can read that online. You can go to the MESDA website.

Celia Walker 36:29

Well, we believe that, you know, living with Tennessee furniture and Tennessee pieces enriches our lives. Uh the understanding of that history makes it even more significant for us to be around those folks, those pieces. But I don't have $60,000 to to buy a piece of history. What would you recommend for the average person to get their, dip their toe into it?

C. Tracey Parks 36:50

So that piece, that that is well above the estimates that the auction company gave, and it that is what happens when you have a very rare piece, well documented in this case, and you have uh aggressive uh collectors from a region and a museum. So that's atypical, I would say, in in large large respects. You can go out and buy plenty of, if you can find them, secretaries or secretary bookcases and things at at prices that are not too far out of line with what you might expect to pay if you were to go and get something similar in a new furniture store, a nice piece of furniture. So I think that's kind of an exceptional price because it's an exceptional piece of furniture. And it can tell a story that because of the the musical part of it, because of the documentation. And and you have you know a lot about that shop, or you can learn a lot about that shop if you go and and explore what's in the day book.

Celia Walker 37:52

And I think you've done a lot of research and you've looked and looked, and it's it's looking, right? It's it's taking the time to look.

C. Tracey Parks 38:00

Yes. I'm sometimes accused from my very lovely wife that uh have you been on the computer long enough today? look at a lot of material on on the Internet, search through a lot of auction catalogs, and and maybe I hope it's not an obsession, and maybe it's not. But but I I enjoy doing it. And you make discoveries that way because not everything is properly labeled.

Sarah Campbell Drury 38:21

And to your point, you can get a really nice sugar chest these days for anywhere between about $ 2,000 and $ 5,000, and and chests for $ 600 to $ 1,200.

C. Tracey Parks 38:32

So right now you can buy a lot of what I would call entry-level perfectly good pieces that have they're better built than anything, most things that you could buy new at much less prices. But they're not the rarest things, but they're beautiful. You could enjoy them in your home. So I mean, that's that's something people should consider.

Celia Walker 38:53

And you'll learn more about your state. That's right.

C. Tracey Parks 38:55

It's a good way to learn more.

Sarah Campbell Drury 38:57

And you can see examples of some of these furniture pieces, the State Museum website, Art of Tennessee, Art and Mystery of Tennessee furniture. That book is available in libraries, even if you can't find it readily anywhere else. And and and on Case's website, too, we have um a really good archive that you can look at. Um Thank you, Tracey, for taking the time to be with us today. I mean, there's just so much to unpack about this subject, and we're grateful that you took the time to come by and share your expertise.

Celia Walker 39:26

Our show is edited by Ben Hill. Music is by Kylie Daly. Thanks to J.T. Spangler and the folks at Vanderbilt University Studio 608 for recording this episode. And thanks to all of you for listening.