Articles

 

Adventures With Early American Furniture

By Eleanor Roosevelt   House & Garden Magazine January 1934
 

An army truck was bumping its way over the road between New York City and the District of Columbia. Unfortunately, the men in charge had not been trained as furniture packers and some the furniture inside was getting some rather sever jolts.

It was the day before March 4th, 1933, and this furniture belonged to the President-to-be –Inaugurated and his family. It was being taken out his home in New York City to make the rooms on the second floor of the White House remind him and his family that they had a special interest in a certain kind of furniture even though they were moving into the house owned by the citizens of the United States.

This furniture was made in a shop situated on part of President Roosevelt’s land at Hyde Park, New York. Because so many people have asked about this furniture and why this factory came to be, I am writing this little story of its beginnings.

One day a gay party of picnickers was sitting on the banks of a stream---the party consisted of Mr. Roosevelt, Miss Nancy Cook, Miss Marion Dickerman, Mrs. Daniel O’Day, several children and myself. As we ate we talked of many things. For a long time, Mr. Roosevelt and I had been much interested in rural problems and we had often wondered whether it would be possible to establish some small industries in rural communities. There were several objectives to achieve. At present few farms paid enough to make the ambitious boy want to stay at home; as soon as he grew up, he would invariably drift to a nearby city. This took the best of the young blood out of the community. We thought if something could be done which would give those boys a chance to learn a trade, to earn some money during the year, they could probably be kept on the farm. In this way they would be living at home, helping with the farm work morning and evening and during busy seasons on the farms they would be able to stay out of the factory for short periods of time.

There was also the problem of rural women, tied to their homes to a greater extent than the men, often marooned in winter and much less apt to go to town than the men of the family, even to do the Saturday shopping. As one of my neighbors once said to me, “I haven’t been out of my yard in nine months,” and yet she lived only five miles from the county seat and her husband owned a car, though he ran it sparingly.

The Home Bureau has done much to give these women interests, but unfortunately our county has never yet seen to launch a Home Bureau and I was anxious to start the people of our village doing various kinds of Early American hand work in the hope this idea would gradually spread to some other farms.

So as we were talking over all these problems, Miss Cook suddenly said she thought the spot we were picnicking would be an ideal place for a cottage, and added that she had a longing to go back to her wood working which she had taught before the War. “Why not start a factory and copy Early American furniture?” she said. At first we did not think of it seriously, but the plan gradually grew and before we knew it our stone cottage was built, and the little factory back of it, consisting of the cellar, one large work room, a small apartment over it for our caretaker, and one long dormitory containing a shower and which was the place many boys chose to sleep in when we came up to the country for week-ends.

We knew that we would have to have expert workmen in order to set a high standard for our furniture. The next step was a visit to the Metropolitan Museum in New York where a new wing of Early American furniture had just opened. We asked Mr. Cornelius, then in charge, if he thought a venture of this kind had any chance of appealing to the buying public. He took us to Mr. Morris Schwartz who was then mending much of the old furniture in the new wing. Mr. Schwartz came over here as a little boy from Russia and worked with a New England cabinet maker who taught him to love good workmanship and all the merits of American furniture. He can tell the age of a piece of wood by passing his hand over it, and he probably knows where every really genuine Early American piece is to be found in this country. He listened to us with considerable interest and some skepticism; but he finally invited us to meet him at a rather famous furniture factory. It happened that the owner of this factory, while he used very beautiful designs, was running his business on a purely commercial way. So when we had finished our visit we told Mr. Schwartz we did not intend to run our business at all in that manner. At this, he almost embraced us and said that that being the case he would gladly help us.

With his advice, we came back and started our furniture business with a few of his pieces, as we had to have some furniture in the cottage. But gradually we have replaced those early pieces of his with things made on the place, and now nothing in the cottage, except the upholstered furniture, is not of our own make.

We started with one workman and Miss Cook. Our first exhibition was held six years ago in our New York house. We sold enough furniture then and had enough orders to take us through the winter. Gradually we grew, taking on more expert cabinet makers, Italians and Norwegians who had settled in the neighborhood, and one expert finisher. Soon boys of the vicinity began to come in and ask to learn the trade of furniture making and finishing.

We made mistakes, of course. We meant to make this furniture in a way it was made in the early days in this country, when men lovingly built with their own hands the things that went into their homes. So we have in some families today a table made by a young husband for his wife, a corner cupboard to hold her dishes, and a cradle for their first child. He was not always a finished workman, but he worked with loving care, and years of use and constant rubbing have given a finish to the wood which even our greater knowledge can not always duplicate.

We do try to make things in the same way as they were made in those days, with the idea of having then last a long time and become part of the atmosphere of a home. We use machinery for our first processes, the cutting out of the wood, etc., in order to bring down the cost somewhat, but we use the old mortise and tenion joints and we put our things together by hand. We even do our turnings by hand, and while we can not provide the finish of age, we leave no sharp edges and we do not cover up defects with heavy varnish or shellac. The finish is put on gradually, the wood rubbed down between each process with steel wool until we have brought out all the grain. There is no roughness to anything which leaves our factory. The pieces feel so nice that it is a real joy to touch them.

At first the boys who came to work came simply to spend eight hours, get their pay and leave. Sometimes they would try to introduce their own methods of working rather than follow Miss Cook’s directions, but they were always promptly discovered and the finish which had gone on too quickly came off again painfully, and before very long the boys got the idea that good workmanship in itself was something which could give pleasure to themselves. As we passed through the shop they would often say to Miss Cook, “Don’t you think I have good color on this?” or, “Don’t you think this piece feels nice?’ That in itself was an accomplishment of which we were very proud.

Other industries have grown a little too. Some weaving is now done in the village and it is quite creditable. A little model road-side stand has been built at the turnoff the road not far from the Val-kill factory and perhaps someday other things can be developed. But at present the four women who own the shop, Mrs. Daniel O’Day, Miss Nancy Cook, Miss Marion Dickerman and myself, feel that we have about all we can handle and Miss Cook, who is manager, has done a remarkable job in cutting down her personnel during the depression years. She has paid expenses, kept her best workmen who are married men and managed to give them a little more than the NRA wages, and a little less than the NRA hours, and to find for those she was obliged to let go some kind of work to tide them over the depression.

Up in the Val-kill shop we have copied many of the most interesting pieces that are shown in the American wing of the Metropolitan Museum of art in New York, and one of the most interesting things which journeyed in that army van to Washington was a copy of the chair and bench and drawing table which Thomas Jefferson designed and had made for himself in his own shop in Monticello. And now these pieces live in the rooms which, for a time, President Lincoln, President Theodore Roosevelt and President Woodrow Wilson lived in, each with his own possessions set about to remind him of home that he had left behind in order to serve his country.

From the little maple tea table in the sitting room at the end of the long hall, Prime Minister MacDonald, Premier Herriott, Prime Minister Bennett, and many other notables from near and far have had their tea, and many of the little tables which hold books and cigarettes, when they talk to each other at midnight---the hour, I believe, when all intimate things are supposed to come to life---can boast of the interesting people they have seen and listened to in silence since they have journeyed to Washington.