Daniel Trotter

Last updated December 04, 2023

Daniel Trotter (1747-1800) was an American furniture maker.

Biography

Daniel Trotter was born in 1747 in Philadelphia, to William Trotter, a shoemaker, and his wife Elizabeth, who had six children altogether. His father died when Daniel was twelve, and his mother died four years after. His father was a Quaker, and Daniel likely received schooling provided by the Quaker Society. At that time, Anthony Benezet and Robert Proud were teachers there. Around age 14 he was apprenticed to cabinet maker William Wayne. Making furniture and woodcraft ran in the family: His great-uncle Benjamin Trotter (also a "zealous Preacher") was a chair maker; Joseph Trotter, his uncle, was a joiner. Two of his cousins were trained as cabinet makers, and Joseph, his older brother, was a chair maker. By 1768 he was finished as an apprentice, and by 1771 he had a partner, John Webb, also a Quaker: such partnerships for a limited number of years were common among Quakers, and in 1774 Webb and Trotter ended their relationship.^[1]

In December 1773 he married Elizabeth Conarroe, also from a Quaker family, and they rented a house on Elfreth's Alley. From 1775 to 1779 he and an apprentice ran a shop on Water Street, but during the American Revolutionary War, times were hard: because Quakers were not allowed to do military service he had to pay fines, and the depressed incomes in America at the time already slowed down demand on luxury items. By 1783 or thereabouts, his business was doing well enough to raise his income above that of the average person in his trade, and tax records throughout the 1780s prove increasing success. He also occupied a number of administrative positions of importance in his church. In 1789 he joined the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and was nominated to the Action Committee, where he attended weekly meetings; he remained a member the rest of his life. He bought a share in the Library Company of Philadelphia, and built up a collection of books evidencing his "rather pedestrian taste" in reading.^[1]

His business success enabled him to buy 12 acres of land in 1781, in Springfield Township, Burlington County, and in 1791 he bought 411 acres in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, where a number of notable Philadelphians were investing in land. He bought properties in Philadelphia as well, and in 1783 he bought the house he and his wife had been renting on Elfreth's Alley, and in the following years continued to buy, and also sell, real estate in the city. He built two shops (one for his business) on land he owned nearby, and in May 1795 he sold the house on Elfreth's Alley and moved the family to a new home on nearby Front Street. Their new house was relatively new, and had three stories; the Trotter family lived comfortably and enjoyed luxuries (in ornaments and dress) that made some Quakers cringe, because it jarred with the required plainness of living for Quakers.^[1]

He died early in May 1800 of "lingering illness".^[1]

Workmanship

Trotter made six mahogany ladderback chairs for the banker and slave owner Stephen Girard in 1786; they are cited as an example of a "more modest" neoclassical style that was making inroads in Philadelphia.^[2] Connected to this set of chairs is a Pembroke table, 1785–95.^[3] Other chairs that resemble Trotter's are frequently ascribed to him, including two in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but those two have details that suggest they are not his.^[4]

Related Research Articles

Charles Rohlfs, was an American actor, patternmaker, stove designer and furniture maker. Rohlfs is a representative of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and is most famous for his skill as a furniture designer and maker.

Duncan Phyfe was one of nineteenth-century America's leading cabinetmakers.

Shaker furniture is a distinctive style of furniture developed by the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, commonly known as Shakers, a religious sect that had guiding principles of simplicity, utility and honesty. Their beliefs were reflected in the well-made furniture of minimalist designs.

The Goddard and Townsend families of Newport lend their name to an extensive body of New England furniture associated with Newport, Rhode Island in the second half of the 18th century.

Thomas Affleck (1740–1795) was an 18th-century American cabinetmaker, who specialized in furniture in the Philadelphia Chippendale style.

Daniel Pabst was a German-born American cabinetmaker of the Victorian Era. He is credited with some of the most extraordinary custom interiors and hand-crafted furniture in the United States. Sometimes working in collaboration with architect Frank Furness (1839–1912), he made pieces in the Renaissance Revival, Neo-Grec, Modern Gothic, and Colonial Revival styles. Examples of his work are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Gottlieb Daniel Paul Weber was a German artist. Weber is known for his ethereal and timeless landscape paintings of early northeast America. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1848 and though he returned to Germany around 1860 his influence on American landscape painting was still felt for years.

Peter Stretch was among the most prominent early American clockmakers and among the first makers of scientific instruments in America.

Jonathan Gostelowe was an 18th-century American cabinetmaker, best remembered for his Philadelphia Chippendale-style furniture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Savery (cabinetmaker)</span>

William Savery was an 18th-century American cabinetmaker noted for his furniture in the Queen Anne and Philadelphia Chippendale styles.

Benjamin Randolph (1721—1791) was an 18th-century American cabinetmaker who made furniture in the Queen Anne and Philadelphia Chippendale styles. He made the lap desk on which Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence.

Arthur Espenet Carpenter was a master woodworker and furniture maker in Bolinas, California known for his wishbone chair and desk with scalloped seashell sides. Self-taught, he joined the Baulines Craft Guild. He also taught had apprentices. His work is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution and has been exhibited in The Museum of Modern Art and The Museum of Arts and Design in New York. He was declared a “living California treasure” in 1984. He received The Furniture Society's Award of Distinction in 2001.

A ladderback chair, also ladder-back chair, slatback chair or fiddle back although that name is used less now due to the creation of the fiddle back chair. It gets its name from the horizontal spindles that serve as the back support on them and are reminiscent of a ladder.

Daniel Dupuy, Sr., was an American silversmith who was active from 1745 to 1805 in Philadelphia. He was born as the fourth child of Dr. John and Anne (Chardavoine) Dupuy, Huguenots, in New York City, and apprenticed in 1740 to his brother-in-law, Peter David, in Philadelphia. He married Eleanor Cox on September 6, 1746, in Philadelphia, and with her had six children, including silversmith Daniel Dupuy, Jr. Dupuy's works are collected in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of American History, Winterthur, the Yale University Museum, and elsewhere.

Modern Gothic exhibition cabinet is a piece of Modern Gothic furniture now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Although its design was once attributed to Philadelphia architect Frank Furness and furniture maker Daniel Pabst, MMA now credits its design and manufacture to Pabst alone. At 8 feet (2.4 m) tall, it is an unusually large and polychromatic American example of the rare style.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Downs</span> American decorative arts curator

Joseph Downs was an American museum curator and scholar of American decorative arts. After 17 years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Downs became founding curator of the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library from 1949 to 1954. His assistant, Charles F. Montgomery, became Winterthur's first director after Downs' death.

Morrison Harris Heckscher is an American retired curator and art historian who served as the Lawrence A. Fleischman Chair of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 2001 to 2014. He had worked in various curatorial roles at the Met since 1966. As chair, he oversaw a complete renovation of the interior and exhibits. He is a recipient of the Antique Dealers' Association Award of Merit and the Winterthur Museum's Henry Francis du Pont Award.

Milo Merle Naeve was an American art historian, curator, and museum administrator who worked at the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library, Colonial Williamsburg, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and the Art Institute of Chicago, where he held the first curatorship in American arts and the first endowed curatorship at the Institute.

Quilting Frolic is an oil-on-canvas genre painting by American artist John Lewis Krimmel (1786–1821). It was painted in Philadelphia in 1813. Purchased in 1953, the work is held in the permanent collection of the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library. The painting depicts an interior domestic scene of merrymaking with a Black child serving and a Black fiddler entertaining partygoers celebrating the completion of a quilt.

References

1 2 3 4 Castrodale Golovin, Anne (1970). "Daniel Trotter: Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia Cabinetmaker". Winterthur Portfolio. The University of Chicago Press. 6: 151–184. doi:10.1086/495801. JSTOR 1180528. S2CID 161129153.
↑ Schwarz, Robert L. (1980). The Stephen Girard Collection. Vol. 12. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art. Cited in Philip D. Zimmerman, Charles T. Butler, Catherine E. Hutchins, American Federal Furniture and Decorative Arts from the Watson Collection, p. 17.
↑ Zimmerman, Philip D.; Butler, Charles T.; Hutchins, Catherine E. (2004). American Federal Furniture and Decorative Arts from the Watson Collection. Hudson Hills. pp. 17, 29, 30, 37. ISBN 9781882650170.
↑ Rogers, Mary-Alice; Heckscher, Morrison H. (photographs) (1985). American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 2. Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 110. ISBN 9780870994272.

External links

"Trotter Family collection". Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library. COL0325.— this collection contains Trotter's accounts book, some of his business papers and correspondence, and various papers relating to his estate at the time of his death

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[golovin-1] 1 2 3 4 Castrodale Golovin, Anne (1970). "Daniel Trotter: Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia Cabinetmaker". Winterthur Portfolio. The University of Chicago Press. 6: 151–184. doi:10.1086/495801. JSTOR 1180528. S2CID 161129153.

[2] Schwarz, Robert L. (1980). The Stephen Girard Collection. Vol. 12. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art. Cited in Philip D. Zimmerman, Charles T. Butler, Catherine E. Hutchins, American Federal Furniture and Decorative Arts from the Watson Collection, p. 17.

[watson-3] Zimmerman, Philip D.; Butler, Charles T.; Hutchins, Catherine E. (2004). American Federal Furniture and Decorative Arts from the Watson Collection. Hudson Hills. pp. 17, 29, 30, 37. ISBN 9781882650170.

[4] Rogers, Mary-Alice; Heckscher, Morrison H. (photographs) (1985). American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 2. Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 110. ISBN 9780870994272.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]