Everyday Life in Portsmouth
The Portsmouth Historical Society has particularly
fine collections of federal and American Empire style furniture.
The card table shown here was made in either
northeastern Massachusetts or coastal New Hampshire between 1795 and 1810.
The Society's collections include portraits of Portsmouth furniture craftsmen
Langley Boardman and Samuel Dockum.
In June 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the new federal
Constitution, ensuring that it would go into effect, and the following
year President George Washington visited Portsmouth as part of a tour of
New England.
The
early years of the new Republic were promising for Portsmouth. The town
recovered from the war, and business improved as trade goods flowed again
through the port. New business opportunities arose in manufacturing (notably
woolens) and in banking. But there were violent fluctuations in the economy
as Britain challenged America's right to trade freely in the Atlantic.
Architectural
styles changed, the center-chimney houses of the colonial period giving
way to three-story center-hall mansions, whose graceful proportions were
accentuated by delicate linear decorations. Similar stylistic changes took
place in furniture, following the taste established in Britain by the Adam
brothers. But local craftsmen--led by Langley Boardman and the firm of Judkins & Senter--came
to dominate the Portsmouth furniture market, with elegant and distinctive
designs. Families who furnished their homes with these pieces treasured
and saved them.
A family's
best china was now English or French, not Chinese as it had been in the eighteenth
century. Local silversmiths, especially the Drowns, produced fine flatware
and serving pieces. These luxurious embellishments, displayed at dinner or
tea, visibly proclaimed a family's status, while helping to mark its place
in the newly emerging middle class. Images of loved ones were displayed on
daintily painted and framed pendants, created by local or itinerant painters.
The story of everyday life in Portsmouth is just
one of the stories the Portsmouth Historical Society tells. We also
tell the stories of
Portsmouth as a seaport and colonial capital, of Portsmouth's role
in the American Revolution
and the development of the United States Navy, of women in Portsmouth
and of Portsmouth men abroad, and of the Colonial Revival that heightened
awareness of our local and national past.
Portsmouth Historical Society
We
Tell Portsmouth Stories
