It is rare when objects of a similar age but widely different origins arrive in an unfamiliar location and settle in happily together. It isperhaps even more unexpected to find an intercontinental mix of furnishings from mid-eighteenth-century Ireland, England, and the United States in Natchez, Mississippi. Although it has been ruled under five international flags, Natchez is most closely associated with the pre-Civil War South. A grand old cotton port on the bluffs overlooking the mighty Mississippi River, the city has beautifully preserved its large assortment of ambitious planters’ houses, most of which date from the second quarter of the nineteenth century. It is a city of tall columns and tall tales, deep tufting and shallow tableaux, and all the other great things that reflect the romanticized antebellum South.
Fig. 1. Reflecting the diversity and quality of the collection at Cottage Gardens in Natchez, a mid-eighteenth-century Irish gilded looking glass hangs above a small mahogany tea caddie on top of a seventeenth-century English walnut box that is placed on a rich mahogany English console with Vitruvian scroll frieze and lion’s-paw feet. Reflected in the looking glass is a well-documented tall-case clock that has the original label reading, “Made and sold by George Pickering [d. 1784], Cabinet and Chair Maker in Water Street between Race and Vine Streets, Philadelphia.” The clockworks are signed by Jacob Godshalk (c. 1735–1781) of Philadelphia.
Fig. 2. Typical of the South, a broad hall bisects the house. The Irish mahogany serving table of c. 1760 is illustrated in the Knight of Glin and James Peill’s Irish Furniture (2007). The Philadelphia mahogany side chairs of c. 1775 have knee carving attributed to John Pollard (1740–1787) and a crest attributed to “Spike,” an unknown carver whose style is distinctive. The English gilded looking glass and rococo brackets all date to the mid-eighteenth century.
Fig. 3. Cottage Gardens in Natchez, Mississippi. Photograph courtesy of the Historic Natchez Foundation.
Fig. 4. Entrance hall at Cottage Gardens in a photograph of c. 1939. Louisiana State University Libraries, Baton Rouge, Special Collections, Thomas H. and Joan W. Gandy Collection
Fig. 5. Overlooking the stair hall is an authoritative mahogany and mahogany veneer chest-on-chest with a pierced pediment made for Joseph Fox (1709–1779) of Foxboro, Pennsylvania, c. 1775. Its carving is by an unknown carver, probably Philadelphian Richard Butts (active 1768–1778).
Fig. 6. In the rear hall near the garden stands the desk-and-bookcase made c. 1770 in the Philadelphia shop of Benjamin Randolph (1737–1792) and passed down through the family to Pennsylvania State Senator Richard Tilghman. This architectonic bespoke piece is inscribed and dated “Nancy Emlen 1771” and arguably has the most elaborately carved interior (in this case by Pollard) of any American desk-and-bookcase. Details of the carved feet are from Thomas Chippendale’s Gentleman and Cabinet-maker’s Director (1762). The Milton bust and glass are replacements.
Fig. 7. The parlor mixes English, Irish, Philadelphia, and New York furniture in a panoply of “S” scrolls; lush fabrics; and glistening silver. The New York center table with stone top is flanked by British upholstered furniture, including a settee from c. 1755 and armchairs, the furthest in the style of Giles Grendey (1693–1780) and dating to c. 1745. On the table is a silver coffeepot by Thomas Whipham (active 1739–1785), 1752. Facing it on an Irish kettle stand with dolphin feet are a kettle and stand by John Edwards (active 1788–1811), London, 1801. On the dressing table (far left) with carving by Nicolas Bernard and Martin Jugiez is an English silver shell-shaped cake basket with dolphin feet c. 1745. Also visible are four of six Philadelphia side chairs from c. 1765 with carving attributed to Pollard. Collector Don Oxenhandler considers them to have the best legs in the South. The highly three-dimensionally carved white pine pelmets probably date to the early twentieth century. In the right corner is a Philadelphia slant-front desk, c. 1770, with an elaborately carved interior by Pollard using the same device as on the aprons of the chairs. The carpet is a Tabriz c. 1900.
Fig. 8. Certainly a favorite in the collection is the diminutive (less than 40 inches at the waist) Philadelphia chest-on-chest from the collection of Mrs. Lammot Du Pont Copeland. The cast brasses and much of the carving are original, the latter attributed to Jugiez. Alan Miller recently restored bits of the scroll board carving and carved the cartouche. In front of it is one of a pair of British stools with period gros-point needlework coverings and gadrooned edges on the aprons.
ig. 9. In one corner of the parlor is the tall-case clock that was the first major piece Jerold Krouse purchased. The brass and silvered engraved dial is signed “Careel Christoffel, Amsterdamn.” Like many pieces in the house, it was made in Philadelphia, has details attributed to the anonymous craftsman known as the Garvan carver, and dates to 1750–1760.
Fig. 10. Some of the most elegant carving in the Cottage Gardens collection is on this Philadelphia card table, which descended in the Stevenson and Lowry families. The ball-and-claw-foot table of c. 1765 has a crusty old finish and carving by Hercules Courtenay (1744–1784).
Fig. 11. Light streams into a corner of the dining room. An Irish card table, illustrated in the Knight of Glin and Peill’s Irish Furniture, holds a water cooler with spout and a pair of eighteenth-century brass candlesticks. Above it is an English mahogany and parcel gilt looking glass, c. 1740. In front of the window is another from the set of six Philadelphia side chairs with carving by Pollard.
Fig. 12. Two sets of mid-eighteenth-century chairs (one set may be Scottish) surround the early nineteenth-century English dining table. On it is a notable epergne with an unusually large number of baskets (nine), it is date marked for 1757 and with “TP,” probably by Thomas Pitts (active c. 1740–1780). On the right wall is a large mid-eighteenth-century Irish serving table with an apron heavily carved with birds and foliage.
Fig. 13. The imposing Governor Simon Snyder (1759–1818) high chest of drawers commands the dining room and opposes its matching dressing table in the adjoining parlor. Made in Philadelphia in the late 1750s, the pair was reunited in the 1980s for the Stanley Paul Sax collection with the help of the Israel Sack firm. The lower drawers and legs have carving attributed to Bernard and upper parts of the high chest and original cartouche to Jugiez, the more confident and accomplished carver of the two.
Fig. 14. Detail of the tall-case clock also seen in Fig. 1.
Fig. 15. Transformed in the 1960s with antique cypress paneling, carefully chosen by former owner, lumberman William C. McGehee, the library holds one of the great mystery pieces in the collection. The mahogany mirrored-door desk-and-bookcase with broken pediment of c. 1750 has superfluous shallow carving in the Scottish taste, but secondary woods from both Britain and the American South. Undoubtedly produced in the British Isles with exported colonial wood, it is an important and powerful piece of mid-eighteenth-century furniture. Flanking it is a pair of New York side chairs of c. 1770. In the center of the room is a scalloped-top mahogany tea table made in Philadelphia c. 1760 with embellishments by the Garvan carver. The two armchairs are British.
Fig. 16. The much exhibited high chest in the bedroom was in the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1918 to 2005. It was made for Joseph Moulder (1722–1779) in Philadelphia, 1765–1780, possibly in Randolph’s shop; it has carving by Courtenay and retains its original hardware and cartouche. On the left is a mahogany side chair from the set made for Richard and Elizabeth Armitt Waln with carving attributed to the Garvan carver. Its sterling provenance includes Joe Kindig Jr. Antiques, Stratford Hall Plantation, and the Fairmount Park Commission. On the opposite side is an Irish mahogany side chair.
Fig. 17. The bedroom has a remarkable English mahogany high-post bed of c. 1760, one of four eighteenth-century beds in the house. Perfect for high-ceilinged southern rooms, the posts are unusually tall and support an original carved architectonic cornice. The cluster-columned posts themselves are carved with winding floral and fruit vines, acanthus-carved urns, and several rings of egg-and-dart molding.
Unusual features include the carved rails (hidden by the
coverlet) and old-fashioned (for 1760) paneled backboard. The bed also retains its original pulley system for bed hangings. The shapely Philadelphia easy chair (c. 1765) too is untouched, with original finish and crisp carving attributed to the same anonymous carver (probably Butts) who worked on the Fox chest in the hall. Typically Irish, the reading stand has carved diaper panels, drapery swags, and dolphin feet.
Fig. 18. Detail of the side chair at the left in Fig. 16.
Cottage Gardens sits back rather reticently from the street, and in contrast to the city’s grand mansions, is more intimately scaled. Long believed to have been built in 1794 for Spanish royal governor Don José Vidal (1765–1828) on a land grant from the Spanish crown, its exposed chimneys, rare in this region, suggest this early date as does its location in the old northern suburbs, which is at odds with development of the town. The cottage was significantly updated (or perhaps even rebuilt) in the 1830s or 1840s, possibly by architect T. J. Hoyt, whose distinctive semielliptical stairway can also be seen at The Burn. Typical of the planters’ cottages indigenous to the Lower Mississippi Valley, the house is a story and a half, with its long roof incorporating a recessed gallery-porch on both the front and rear. The facade has the unusual distinction of a pedimented gable, with a bull’s eye window, which adds formality to the rustic cottage form. Although the cylindrical columns replace early square ones, the “sheaf of wheat” design balustrade is original to the house.
Cottage Gardens seems always to have been well maintained and was among the first houses to be open for the Natchez Pilgrimage Tours in 1932. In the 1960s a major remodeling took place under the auspices of the revered architect A. Hays Town (1903–2005) for then owners and preservationists William and Sarah McGehee. Cottage Gardens was thus the childhood home of the McGehees’ daughter, antiques dealer Millie McGehee, who came of age at parties in its basement, where she is said to have performed her famed naked antler dance—sadly before the days of YouTube.
The gardens from which the house took its name were swept away in the Civil War and its aftermath, but remnants of the old cedar-lined semicircular drive remained, along with a number of craggy gracious old southern live oaks. Landscape designer William Garbo has taken advantage of these, as well as two ancient cisterns and sections of original stone paving, to reestablish a somewhat formal layout with informal plantings. Several large sugar kettles have been added as well as a charming reconstructed pigeonnier.
The current owners, Betty Jo and Jerry Krouse, bought the property in 1985 and made few changes to the house itself. Fortunately, Cottage Gardens has the high ceilings and finely proportioned rooms that suit the Krouses’ assemblage of Irish and colonial rococo furniture—as well as the occasional piece from England or Scotland.
Jerry Krouse is a brilliant raconteur, ribald jokester, accomplished composer, and former scrap dealer. He is also a passionate collector with a healthy sense of humor about the intricate byways of the antiques business and a refreshing candor about his beginnings as a total antiques naif. “All I knew about antiques,” he says of his early days as a potential collector, “was that I liked the feet with little claws grasping balls. That led me straight to the middle of the eighteenth century. Thank you God!” There were a number of misadventures, misunderstandings, and even a few missed bids on the rocky road to serious collecting. But what began with little carved feet grew to include rococo cartouches and carved bust finials.
Although exuberantly decorated Philadelphia furniture was the bait, Krouse initially figured that buying high style Irish pieces of the same period would give him, as he says, “Philadelphia on the cheap.” He is still passionate about his Irish collection and adds to it, but he was inevitably drawn to great Philadelphia pieces from the third quarter of the eighteenth century. After his first major purchase in this field, an eighteenth-century Philadelphia tall-case clock (Fig. 9), one of five with details by the so-called Garvan carver, Krouse reports that he sat down to a lunch of dainty, crustless finger sandwiches at the home of the Pennsylvania dealer who sold him the clock. “Two thoughts were running through my mind,” he remembers. “How am I going to pay for this damn thing without my father and uncle finding out? And I can’t believe that after I paid $120,000 for his clock, this is what he serves me for lunch!”
Natchez is a town where most of the serious collections are of mid-nineteenth-century rococo revival furniture from Philadelphia and New York acquired in the years before the Civil War. The Krouses have taken a step further back in time and purchased mid-eighteenth-century rococo furniture from those renowned furniture-producing cities. Quietly, mostly through the guidance of Alan Miller, they have amassed a superb collection of American furniture including several revered masterpieces and a number of unpublished masterworks. The couple did not envision a restrained, neutral interior for their collection, nor did they want anything like the nineteenth-century pageantry that typifies Natchez interior design. There would be no velvet, floral fabrics, or wallpaper, and certainly no lace. It was decided that fabrics of vivid indigo blue and a fairly bright yellow would be strong enough to stand up to the powerfully designed furniture. It was also decided that the effect would not be period correct but period sympathetic.
A set of antique carved pelmets with phoenixes and rococo scrolls was found in New York, and these added some carving and gave the necessary weight to the upper parts of the parlor (Fig. 7). They also provided shaped eighteenth-century style headings for the yellow silk curtains, which included swags, long jabots, and tassels and tiebacks in blue and yellow. The walls were painted pale yellow through most of the ground floor.
In the library, however, where Hays Town added pale cypress woodwork, the walls were glazed bright dark red, a splendid foil for a mahogany mirror-doored desk-and-bookcase with gilded cartouche (Fig. 15). In the ground floor bedroom, red was used again for the hangings of a British bed from around 1760 (Fig. 17). A Philadelphia easy chair from the same period is a recent acquisition and has carved legs with their original crusty finish.
The large sideboard table in the entrance epitomizes everything about Irish Georgian furniture that the Krouses came to love: original mahogany top, crazy satyr’s mask, oak-leaf swags with acorns, a pierced acanthus frieze with a diapered background, and hairy lion’s- paw feet (Fig. 2). But this grand table has to compete with a major Philadelphia piece: the circa 1780 rococo tall-case clock with works by Jacob Godshalk (see Figs. 1, 14). Made in the shop of George Pickering, the clock has carving attributed to John Pollard and features a painted moon face, typical of the post-Revolutionary period. The desk-and-bookcase of about 1770 at the back of the hall has what is arguably the most elaborately carved interior of any desk produced in America.
The chest-on-chest in the parlor is one of the finest examples of Philadelphia rococo furniture (Fig. 8). For many years it was the centerpiece of Pamela and Lammot du Pont Copeland’s collection at Mount Cuba in Delaware. With peerless proportions and sinuous carving by Bernard and Jugiez, it is commanding and impressive, yet intimate and approachable.
One of the Krouses’ most exciting acquisitions was the rare matching high chest and dressing table with carving also by Bernard and Jugiez. The pieces face each other, the former in the dining room and the latter opposite it in the parlor (see Figs. 7, 13). They were reunited in 1980 after almost 125 years by the collector Stanley Paul Sax. When the pair came up at auction at Sotheby’s after Sax’s death in 1998, Jerry Krouse tried to acquire them but left as the underbidder. On finding that the dealer Albert Sack was the successful bidder, Krouse purchased the set from him.
Jerry Krouse continues to maintain very high aesthetic standards for his collection, placing appearance over rarity, proportion over provenance, carving over condition. He is also voluble in expressing his gratitude to Alan Miller, renowned scholar, carver, restorer, detective, and contrarian whom he calls “The Great One,” for instruction and guidance. Miller, in turn, describes Krouse as “an aesthetically driven collector, culturally literate, well informed, eccentric, and wonderful.” The Krouses enjoy their collection in a way that allows their home to exemplify down-home southern warmth. They have welcomed visitors from Milwaukee to Dublin who come to Natchez to savor the Cottage Gardens collection and absorb a little of the exuberant spirit that has brought it together.
RALPH HARVARD, who assisted with the decoration of this house, is an antiquarian and interior designer based in New York.
