The Winterthur Library

 The Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera

Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, DE  19735

302-888-4600 or 800-448-3883

 

 

OVERVIEW OF THE COLLECTION

 

Creator:          Attwill, Joseph Sanger                                     

Title:               Furniture design papers

Dates:             1920s-1970

Call No.:         Col. 842

Acc. No.:         70x122

Quantity:        3 boxes, 4 volumes, wooden filing cabinet

Location:        40 L 4 and oversize shelves in back

 

 

 

BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT

 

J. Sanger Attwill of Lynn, Massachusetts, was the proprietor of Attwill Furniture Company.  He was born in 1899 or1900, and his great grandfather Jesse Lee Attwill had been a cabinet maker in Lynn.  Atwill’s own interest in antiques began when he was a young man, and the particular interest in furniture began when he sold mahogany and other imported woods for Palmer and Parker of Charlestown, Mass.  Around 1926 or 1927, he went to work as a salesman for Postar Furniture, which had recently moved from Boston to Lynn.  In 1930 he bought the business and renamed it Attwill Furniture Company.  It specialized in custom made reproductions and also offered an interior design service.  Attwill himself was a designer and salesman; he hired skilled craftsmen, particularly the brothers Mario and Arthur Torto, to make the furniture.

 

Attwill and the company struggled through the Great Depression and World War II, during which he was hampered by stringent wartime regulations.  A mainstay of his business during these hard times was restoration work and dealing in antiques and secondhand furniture.  After the war, business improved, but by 1970, most of his work was in interior decoration and furniture restoration and refinishing, although the making of new, reproduction, pieces continued.  In 1978, the company was sold to Ronald Trapasso, who had been working there since 1969, and it is still in operation.

 

On a personal side, Attwill and his wife Gladys had a son and a daughter.  They built a reproduction saltbox home, paying attention to details to make it as authentic as possible, and filled the house with their antique collection.  This attention to period details was evident in his interior decorating business as well.  He served as president of the Lynn Historical Society for 30 years, president of the Saugus Ironworks for almost 30 years, and was a member of the Essex Institute, the Marblehead Arts Association, and a trustee of the Lynn Public Library.  He died in 1977. 

 

 

SCOPE AND CONTENT

 

A small group of furniture templates and drawings from the Attwill Furniture Company; scrapbooks with pictures; and magazines and dealers’ catalogs which were collected by J. Sanger Attwill for design ideas.  One scrapbook contains mirror designs; another focuses on interiors inspired by the Colonial period.  The collection contains little original material, rather it includes the kinds of publications a furniture designer and interior decorator collected for inspiration.  The Winterthur Museum owns a collection of furniture templates from the Attwill Furniture Company.      

 

 

LANGUAGE OF MATERIALS

 

The materials are in English.

 

 

RESTRICTIONS ON ACCESS

 

Collection is open to the public.  Copyright restrictions may apply.

           

 

PROVENANCE

           

Gift of J. Sanger Attwill.

 

 

RELATED MATERIALS

 

Winterthur Museum has a collection of templates from the Attwill Furniture Company, museum accession number 70.0116.

 

The Lynn Museum and Historical Society in Massachusetts holds additional Attwill papers.

 

 

ACCESS POINTS

 

Topics:

            Attwill Furniture Company (Lynn, Mass.)

            Furniture design - Massachusetts - Lynn.

            Furniture - Drawings.

            Furniture - Reproduction - Massachusetts - Lynn.        

            Interior decoration - 20th century.

 

 

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE COLLECTION

 

Location: 40 L 4 and oversize shelves in back

 

 

Note: all accession numbers begin with 70x122

 

 

On shelf:

 

.3         scrapbook about houses and colonial style [most pages are blank]

 

.4         scrapbook, chiefly about interiors of houses, with some articles about furniture; a number of the articles are from the magazine The House Beautiful

 

.16       Payson, William Farquhar, editor.  Mahogany, Antique and Modern: A Study of its History and Use in the Decorative Arts.  (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1926.)

 

.17       “Early Americana”: a bound volume of magazines, dated 1937-1940, including issues of House & Garden and House Beautiful, saved for the articles on interior decorating and antiques

 

 

Box 1:

           

.1         scrapbook of mirrors [printed photos from catalogs], with sketches of tables and mirrors.  [most pages are blank]

 

.2         drawing book, with measured sketches of furniture

 

.5a-h    Israel Sack, Inc., catalogs: 1953, March and November 1958, May 1959, October 1959 (brochure no. 5), May 1960 (no. 6), February 1961 (no. 7), November 1961 (no. 8)

 

.6a-b    The Monograph Series, vol. 18, no. 5 (New England interior doorways, by Arthur C. Haskell), and vol. 19, no. 5 (New England staircases, by Benjamin Graham)

 

.7a-b    Old-time New England, vol. 19, no. 2 and 3 (October 1938 and January 1939)

 

.8         Samuel T. Freeman & Co. auction catalog for collection of Charles M. Davenport, 1943, with some prices penciled in

 

.9a-e    Ellis Memorial Antiques Show catalogs: 1960, 1962, 1965, 1968, 1969

 

.10a-b  Winter Antiques Show catalogs: 1964, 1965

 

 

Box 2:

 

.11       American Art Association, Anderson Galleries Inc., auction catalog, sale number 2980, 1932

 

.12       The Magazine Antiques, October 1946 (special issue about the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

 

.13       Yale Alumni Magazine, January 1962 (focuses on Garvan Collection)

 

.14       Gay, Eben Howard.  The Chippendale Room from Woodcote Park, Epsom, Surrey, England [c.1750].   (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1928).

 

.15       Country Life [American edition,] August 1927.

            Note: many of the pages are stuck together; examine with care]

 

.18a-c  loose items: sketches of a Pennsylvania German blanket chest

 

.19-.20a-s        loose items: postcard of a staircase and photos of furniture and ironwork (it is not known if the photos are of the original pieces or of reproductions; a number of the photos are marked as being from the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

 

[no number]      loose items: catalog pages, ad for book about John and Thomas Seymour, and an ad for Dupont stain-resistant fabrics

 

[no number]      loose items: newspaper clippings and magazine articles about antiques and American folk art

 

[no number]      Sammarco, Anthony Mitchell.  J. Sanger Attwill and His Craftsmen.  Lynn: Lynn Historical Society, 1995.  And information from the current Attwill Furniture Company

 

 

Box 3:

 

[no number]      Paper templates and full-size drawings of furniture

[note: a larger collection of furniture templates is part of the Winterthur Museum collection; apply to the Registration Office for access to these]

 

Wooden filing cabinet made by Postar Company  [this cabinet would not have held letter or legal size file folders, but probably held customize-sized sales or work slips]