Procured of the Best and Most Fashionable Materials: The Furnishings of the Lloyd Family of Maryland, 1750-1850

Tuesday, August 10, 2004, 8:00 P.M.

Gould Theater, Legion of Honor

A slide lecture by Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley, Philadelphia Museum of Art

A strong tradition of patriarchy and primogeniture throughout the 17^th, 18^th and 19^th centuries ensured the financial, social and political prominence of Maryland’s Edward Lloyd family. Wye House, where the 12^th generation of Lloyds resides on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, still stands as a monument to their noble statues. The family’s surviving furnishings and art witness and extravagant lifestyle enjoyed by only the wealthiest, most educated and most refined early Americans.

Political service was both an obligation and perquisite for Maryland’s elite. For every consecutive year from 1654 to 1894, the proprietor of Wye House served in an elected position at the local, colonial or state, and then federal level. Positions included royal governor, head of the royal legislature, delegate for the Constitutional convention, state governor, United States congressman and United States senator.

Lloyd family sons and daughters spread their family’s wealth and influence through marriage alliances with the Cadwaladers of Philadelphia and the Tayloes of Virginia. The Lloyds’ Maryland kin includes the Carrolls, Keys, Chases and Hammonds of Maryland. The collection that Ms. Kirtley curates at the Philadelphia Museum of Art includes the silver tea set that was a dowry gift when Edward Lloyd II’s daughter Elizabeth married John Cadwalader. As a native of Baltimore, Ms. Kirtley notes with satisfaction that the famous status of the Lloyd family’s connections is further demonstrated by their kin’s surviving homes, the Chase-Lloyd, Hammond-Harwood and Charles Carroll homes in Annapolis; Homewood in Baltimore; the Tayloe House in Williamsburg and the Tayloe’s Mt. Airy near Richmond.

Contemporaries noted the Lloyds as patrons of art and trendsetters of fashionable taste. The lecture will illustrate the decadent lifestyle that defined the Lloyds’ most glorious years, 1750-1850, through their surviving luxury goods. Furniture includes English masterpieces of Thomas Chippendale himself, Baltimore’s Edward Priestley and John Shaw of Annapolis. The Wye House billiard table by John Shaw is one of Winterthur’s prize possessions. Ms. Kirtley recently identified a painted table and window cornice, found in a Wye House barn, as the work of John and Hugh Finlay of Baltimore,. The Lloyds’ silver rivals objects owned by the late Duke of Devonshire and Elizabeth II. Chinese export porcelain abounds. Paintings by John Beale Bordley, Charles Willson Peale and Benjamin West line their walls. The Lloyds maintained one of the finest libraries in colonial America, now the only intact American colonial library. Ms. Kirtley’s study, however, recognizes that the collection was not static. As each new proprietor (all named Edward) ascended the throne upon his father’s death, the new head of the family seat sold massive amounts of furniture, silver, porcelain and art only to mark his reign with the latest, most fashionable furnishings of his own time.

After earning her bachelor’s degree from Hamilton College, Ms. Kirtley graduated from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture. She interned for the New-York Historical Society, where she catalogued collections of furniture, silver, looking glasses, lusterware, spectacles and fans. Returning to Winterthur, she taught a seminar on “American Interiors, 1770-1850,” researched Chippendale furniture for a trip to England “In the Footsteps of Thomas Chippendale” lead by Brock Jobe and coordinated the Delaware Antiques Show. Ms. Kirtley also helped Leigh Keno appraise the collection of the late Mrs. Lammot du Pont Copeland before starting as assistant curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Her duties at the Philadelphia Museum of Art include overseeing a survey of the furniture collection for conservation, reinstallation in the expanded American wing and publication. Ms. Kirtley is also curating exhibits on Rookwood pottery (2003-2004), Tucker porcelain (January 2005) and Bonnin and Morris porcelain (fall 2005). Other research topics include Philadelphia and Baltimore neoclassical furniture and painted furniture, and the Philadelphia Community of Turners 1800-1820.

7:15 P.M. Mini-exhibition: Colonial decorative arts present a wide range of opportunities for sharing from your collection: a chair, mirror, silver, portrait or print, sampler, costume, jewelry, textiles, coinage, ceramics or glass.

8:00 P.M. Lecture: Gould Theater, California Legion of Honor, Lincoln Park, San Francisco. Enter on the lower (Bay) side: ADAF members free, Forum affiliate members and the general public $15. The auditorium is accessible by elevator and listening assistance devices are available.