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Object Record
Images
Metadata
Object name |
Chair |
Date |
1775-1785 |
Place of origin |
New York, New York |
Materials and techniques |
mixed woods |
Physical description |
Green painted, banister back side chair with rush seat. |
Current exhibit |
Lodging at Fraunces Tavern |
Gallery label |
Lodging at Fraunces Tavern (2025): This bedroom is furnished to exemplify the accommodations provided to a typical wealthy merchant staying at Fraunces Tavern and the trunk he would have brought with him on his journey. The elegant black vegetable-tanned leather trunk is tooled with decorative floral designs on the lid and bears the owner’s initials together with ornamental borders in brass tacks on the sides. The oval brass plate on the front, pictured to the right, is a rare surviving detail on a trunk of this kind. The plate identifies the name of an owner of the trunk and the location where he likely lived—Little Britain in the Hudson River Valley. A similar plate can be found on a trunk in the collection of George Washington’s Mount Vernon used by General Washington during the Revolutionary War. Details like these showed the social status and wealth of their owners. Our trunk, that includes the initials "VK" on the sides, was found in the attic of an historic home still occupied at the time by a descendant of the Van Keuren family. Although the full name of the trunk’s owner is not known, we know the Van Keurens were a leading merchant family of Dutch ancestry that settled in New Amsterdam and the Hudson River Valley in the seventeenth century. Members of that family would have likely made frequent business trips to Manhattan and stayed at taverns such as Fraunces Tavern. The trunk’s donor, Craig Hamilton Weaver, is a direct descendant of the family’s progenitor, Matthias Jansen Van Ceulen (Van Keuren). Van Ceulen had close ties to the Dutch West India Company and was a major landowner in northern Manhattan. Family members in subsequent generations maintained this mercantile tradition. During the Revolutionary War, Matheus Van Keuren, for example, operated a major foundry that provided supplies for fortifications, including a large chain to block the Hudson River to British ships at Fort Montgomery, near modern day Peekskill and Bear Mountain. After the war, another family member in New York City operated a shop, Seaman and Van Keuren, selling imported goods at 38 Front Street, about two blocks southeast of Fraunces Tavern. |
Catalogue number |
2025.03.002 |
Collection name |
Furniture and Decorative Arts |
Credit line |
Gift of Craig Hamilton Weaver, 2025 |
Subjects and places |
New York United States |