Artistic Furniture of the Gilded Age
Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Metropolitan Museum of Art
This program is free to members of the Victorian Alliance of San Francisco who generously cosponsored this event with funds from the Micki Ryan Memorial Education Fund.

Architectural woodwork and paneling, George A. Schastey & Co., 1881–82 Medium: Satinwood, purpleheart, mother-of-pearl, silver-plated brass, mirrored glass, marble, and reproduction upholstery Gift of The Museum of the City of New York, 2008, Accession Number: 2009.226.18

Side chair from the Moorish reception room of the Worsham-Rockefeller House, by George A. Schastey & Co., 1881-1882. Ebonized cherry, brass and original appliques on later upholstery. Brooklyn Museum, gift of John D. Rockefeller. Jr.

Dressing table by George A. Schastey & Co., 1881-1882. Satinwood, purpleheart, white pine, marble, mother-of-pearl, silver-plated drawer pulls, brass, mirrored glass and upholstered footrest with replaced velvet. High Museum of Art, Virginia Carroll Crawford Collection

Wall bracket by George A. Schastey & Co., 1881-1882. Brass, mother-of-pearl, glass shades and semi-precious stones. Gift of the Museum of the City of New York
Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen will introduce the work of George A. Schastey (1839-1894), who founded one of the leading cabinet and decorating firms (1873-1897) of the Gilded Age. Mrs. Frelinghuysen will demonstrate the quality and range of his company’s production through recently identified, and documented, furniture. The focus of her presentation is the Worsham-Rockefeller Dressing Room, a rare surviving commission from 1881-1882 by George Schastey for Arabella Worsham (ca. 1850-1924) who later married railroad magnate Collis P. Huntington (1821-1900). In 1884, she sold the house, with all its furnishings, to John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) who made few changes. This rare survival was preserved by its donation to the Museum of the City of New York upon Mr. Rockefeller’s death in 1937.
The Worsham-Rockefeller Dressing Room is a complete work of art combining luxurious furniture with an opulent interior. Its cohesive artistic interior provides new insights into the luxurious and artistic interiors favored by New York’s wealthiest households in the late 19th century. Mrs. Frelinghuysen will guide us through the welter of Victorian excess to make sense of the amalgamation of different styles with flat, stylized natural ornamentation in combination with carved, Renaissance-style flourishes and ornate marquetry ornamentation. She will help establish Schastey’s contributions by comparison with the furniture, and complementary decorative effects, by some of his competitors: Herts Brothers, Herter Brothers, Pottier and Stymus, and Charles Tisch.
March’s speaker graduated from Princeton University, followed by a master’s degree from the Winterthur program in early American culture. Her career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art started as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow. She successively became an assistant curator, associate curator and, since 1994, the Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts.
Nonnie Frelinghuysen’s publications include American Porcelain, 1720-1920 (1989); American Art Pottery: Selections from the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art (1995); and Louis Comfort Tiffany at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1999). She has also contributed to Splendid Legacy: The Havemeyer Collection (2000) and Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall: An Artist’s Country Estate (2006).