Flat Jane Austen in Providence, Rhode Island

 

Flat Jane Austen Visits Providence, Rhode Island:
In which she pays calls on the elite

Editor's Note: All photos taken inside the Rhode Island School of Design Museum's Pendelton House.

Not all these objects belonged to one family or were displayed at the same time. This room is set up to showcase furniture made in Newport by the Townsend and Goddard workshops. Several generations of craftsmen, related by marriage, created a distinctive furniture design with carved shells on projecting and receding panels. The mahogany desk and bookcase is one of 9 known to exist. Each one is unique, coming from a different cabinet making shop.

"This is the home of the Potter family. We had to travel a great distance to the southern part of the state to a town called South Kingston in the country. The Potters are what I know as gentry or large land owners in spite of the family fortune coming from trade. They are quite influential in their town, being involved in business, politics, and the criminal justice system. Mr. Elisha Reynolds Potter, the patriarch, was a blacksmith and farmer turned lawyer and statesman. He has served in the Rhode Island House of Representatives for several terms now (1796-1797, 1809-1815). Mrs. Potter is his second wife. She has small children including six year old Elisha, Jr. and one two-year-old Thomas Mawney. There is also a new baby, I believe it is another boy. 

American made furniture of the 18th-century

The large chest on chest is attributed to Mr. John Townsend. This was one of the most costly pieces of furniture in the previous century.

The desk-and-bookcase was acquired recently, in 1813 and constructed by Mr. John Goddard in 1761. 

The roundabout chair was designed for gentlemen to turn from side to side without moving the chair.

Here is a small desk in the form of a dressing table.

The side chairs were made in Newport as well (or perhaps Boston). The carved shell design is especially popular here in New England. 

silver and wood teapot,  American, ca. 1735

The curtains are at least English printed and quite new! (1815-1820).

The Americans lack portrait galleries in their homes and are proud to display family portraits and other portraits around the house. Here is an ancestress of the last century.

John Wollaston, American, Mrs. Ebenezer Pemberton, ca. 1750

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Editor's Note:
Geneaological information on the Potter family from the Potter Collection in the South County History Center, Kingston, Rhode Island.


The Potter family enslaved African and/or indigenous people to work on their farm, as did most other landholders of their day in that area. Without the slaves none of this wealth would be possible. Read about the Potter family and other Narragansett Planters' involvement in slavery and the slave trade.


More on Elisha Reynolds Potter at the Rhode Island Historical Society.