Lijevani Viktorijanski Namještaj

Victory over Nature
Victorian Cast-Iron Seating Furniture
Ellen Marie Snyder
M ASS-PRODUCED American cast-iron These three alloys differ largely in the amount of
seating furniture manufactured in the carbon they contain, with cast iron having the most
second half of the nineteenth century and being the least malleable and most brittle. The
was a product of advanced industrial technology British are credited with most advances in cast-iron
and a Victorian interpretation of how it could be technology. Beginning with the first use of coke
used. Although varieties of iron furniture had ex- in the blast furnace in 1709 by Shropshire iron
isted for centuries, the totally cast-iron seating of founder Abraham Darby (1677-1717), newer,
the nineteenth century, a European and American cheaper, and better ways of smelting iron were
phenomenon, was something new. Its appearance, developed.1
manufacture, and use broke sharply with past con- America's iron industry followed Britain's, and
ventions. Contemporaries saw cast iron as the mas- by the second quarter of the eighteenth century,
ter material of the nineteenth century, and to their Darby's techniques were being used in New En-
minds it ornamented, domesticated, and imitated gland to produce cast hollowware. By the nine-
nature. teenth century, the growing American use of the
The history of cast-iron furniture offers a coke-fueled furnace in large foundries led to a
means to explore nineteenth-century attitudes, growth in cast-iron production and a decrease in
particularly in urban America, toward technology, the number of small, rural charcoal furnaces. By
culture, nature, and the home. Middle-class Victo- the 185os and 186os the adoption of European
rian Americans saw the creation of iron chairs and techniques, the discovery of new ore deposits near
settees as the elevation of a base metal into valuable Lake Superior, a growing use of anthracite in the
consumer goods through modern manufacturing East, and the progressive use of bituminous coal in
processes. Their attitudes toward cast-iron furni- Pittsburgh ironmaking and elsewhere led to an in-
ture, apparent even in the designs the metal took, crease in American iron production. The market
reveal faith in industrial progress, a belief in the for iron goods in America expanded along with
superiority of technology over nature, and an in- the increased supply. As cities, transportation net-
creasing desire to subdue and control the natural. works, and manufacturing grew, demand rose for
Using these mass-produced goods, nineteenth- the finished goods which were previously a small
century Americans were able to project the values part of the iron industry's output. Once used pre-
of domesticity outside the home and into the yard, dominantly for ordnance, agricultural imple-
park, and rural cemetery. ments, and domestic utensils, cast iron's uses mul-
The study of cast-iron seating begins with the tiplied. Builders of railroads and steamships,
raw element itself: iron. Always found as ore and machine-shop and factory owners, bridgemakers,
not usable in its natural state, iron must be pro- stove manufacturers, and architects looked to cast
cessed into wrought iron, steel, or cast iron before iron and its properties of moldability, strength,
it can be used in commercial manufacturing. and fire resistance. One nineteenth-century writer
called his time the "Age of Iron" and marveled at
Ellen Marie Snyder is curator of exhibitions at Brooklyn the advanced technology that made it possible to
Historical Society, Brooklyn, N.Y.
This article is based on the author's 1984 master's thesis in
cast almost anything from iron: churches, bridges,
the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture,
University
locomotives, and seemingly anything else from
of Delaware. The author would especially like to thank Kenneth L.
Ames and Donald L. Fennimore for their advice and support.
C 1985 by The 1 W. K.
Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum. Gale, Ironworking (Princes Risborough, Aylesbury,
All rights reserved. 0084-0416/85/2004-0001$02.00 Bucks.: Shire Publications, 1981), pp. 3-10.
This content downloaded from 128.135.012.127 on July 29, 2016 13:09:09 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
222 WinterthurPortfolio
birdhouses to crystal palaces.2 It was not just that tional domestic domains of work were added the
these forms were cast iron but that they were mass- worlds of ceremony, luxury, and leisure.
produced and readily available. It became clear In these environments, cast-iron seating held
that cast iron was no longer for the hearth, kitchen, new dialogues with its surroundings. Although a
farm, and battlefield alone. While the utilitarian product of industry, designers strove to make cast
functions of cast iron continued, in the form of iron appear to be a product of nature. Cast-iron
such items as machinery and transportation goods, furniture in the naturalistic form of grapes, oak
ornamental uses proliferated. Ornamental cast- branches, and ferns visually hovered between the
iron architecture, decorative fencing, and house organic and the manmade, between the highly
and garden ornaments testified to changes in cast- artificial furniture of the house and the natural
iron production and marketing. world beyond. Cast iron was nature transformed,
Many nineteenth-century writers noticed the and its iconography replicated nature. In its do-
expanding uses of cast iron. Cast iron was exalted, mestic form as seating, it brought industrial prod-
elevated, and granted artistic status. By midcen- ucts into the landscape in a tamed and controlled
tury, technological advance became an "ethic of form, in organic shapes which recalled the luxury
progress." Cast iron's use was linked to the growth of the garden and not the labor of the agricultural
of civilization, and new manufactures were seen by farm.
advocates of industry as both the cause and the Studying these dialogues is made easier because
product of this growth. Cast-iron products became much cast-iron furniture survives, as do related
metaphors for progress and the rise of man, what trade catalogues and literature.4 These sources, to-
William Morris called a "mechanical victory over gether with the objects that physically reveal their
nature." On an economic level, this also reflected a own compatibility with their environments, dem-
growing consumerism.3 Due to technological ad- onstrate how mass-produced iron objects came
vances, by midcentury cast iron was available in to participate in a nineteenth-century dialogue
many forms and was relatively cheap. Elevating the among industry, the home, and the outdoors.
substance helped to make it familiar and desirable
and pointed out changing relationships between
the consumer and industry. Cast Iron and Its Moral and Aesthetic Elevation
The elevation of cast iron was logistical as well
as social and aesthetic. Objects new to cast-iron Cast-iron furniture was made by casting, the "pro-
manufacture, such as mass-produced furniture cess of converting fusible metal into any given
and smaller ornamental items, found places in the form, by pouring it when in a liquid state into a
home. Once relegated almost exclusively to kitch-
ens and workrooms, by the mid nineteenth century 4
There are few secondary sources on American Victorian
cast iron was being developed for different kinds cast-iron seating furniture, and those few consist of articles in
of spaces. Cast iron came to be used in the more magazines and small sections in books and exhibition cata-
logues. Probably the most prolific author on the subject is Jo-
refined front areas of the house as vases, urns, seph T. Butler, whose work on cast iron appears in his American
statuary, and especially lawn furniture. It also ap- Antiques, 1800-I900: A Collector'sHistory and Guide (New York:
Odyssey Press, 1965); and in Wendell D. Garrett, Paul F. Nor-
peared in two other peculiarly nineteenth-century ton, Alan Gowans, and Joseph T. Butler, The Arts in America
outdoor areas with domestic affiliations: the park (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969), among other publi-
and the rural cemetery. Thus, to cast iron's tradi- cations. He also discusses cast-iron seating in several
Sleepy
Hollow Press books, such as Sleepy Hollow Restorations:A Cross-
Section of the Collection(1983) and WashingtonIrving's Sunnyside
2John D. Tyler, "Technological Development: Agent of
(1974). A frequently cited source for information and illustra-
Change in Style and Form of Domestic Iron Castings," in Tech- tions of cast-iron objects is the Metropolitan Museum of Art's
nologicalInnovation and theDecorativeArts, ed. Ian M. G. Quimby
and Polly Anne Earl (Charlottesville: Nineteenth-CenturyAmerica: Furniture and Other Decorative Arts
University Press of Vir- (New York: By the museum, 1970). Other exhibition catalogues,
ginia, 1973), pp. 150-53; W. David Lewis, Iron and Steel in such as Philadelphia: Three Centuries of American Art (Phila-
America (Greenville, Del.: Eleutherian
Mills-Hagley Founda- delphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1976); and Katherine S.
tion, 1976), p. 31; Roy Palmer, A Touch on the Times (Har- Howe and David B. Warren, The GothicRevival Style in America,
mondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1974), pp. 31-32.
3 1830-I970 (Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1976), treat only
John F. Kasson, Civilizing the Machine: Technologyand Re- one particular manufacturer. In general, cast-iron furniture is
publican Values in America, 1776-900o (New York: Grossman mentioned as a gesture toward what is called "innovative mate-
Publishers, 1976), p. 45; William Morris, preface to John Rus- rials" used in the nineteenth century, as in David A. Hanks,
kin, The Nature of Gothic: A Chapter of the Stones of Venice, ed. Innovative Furniture in Americafrom i8oo to the Present (New
William Morris (1892; reprint, New York: Garland York: Horizon Press, 1981). A recent article to address the
Publishing
Co., 1977), p. ii. On nineteenth-century consumerism, see actual use of cast-iron furniture and other iron ornament is
Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears, eds., The Cul- Esther Mipaas, "Cast-Iron Furnishings: Sitting Pretty in the
ture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, i880-
Garden," AmericanArt and Antiques 2, no. 3 (May-June 1979):
I980 (New York: Pantheon Books,
1983). 34-41.

Victoryover Nature 223
mould." Iron was first produced in significant manufacturing processes. They were slow to use
amounts 4,000 years ago. Ironmaking techniques coke, the puddling process, and the steam engine.
spread from south-central Asia to India, China, America did not enter the modern iron manufac-
and Europe. Modern technology, mostly rooted in turing age until the 183os, with the discovery of
Europe, was practiced in England by the fifteenth Pennsylvania anthracite coal as a substitute for
century, and it was the English who first brought charcoal. By midcentury, American ironmaking
ironmaking knowledge to America. Ironmaking, assumed the technological capabilities the British
while practiced in Virginia in 1619, was not actu- had acquired years before, and American manu-
ally successful until the installation of a works at facturing grew rapidly. In 1853 George Wallis, a
Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1644 and on the Sau- British commissioner reporting on the New York
gus River in Massachusetts in 1646. During this Industrial Exhibition, noted that "the general
pre-Revolutionary period, ironworking spread character of the cast-iron work of the United States
from Saugus to other parts of Massachusetts, to is admirable" and that "the progress of the past ten
Connecticut, and to Rhode Island. Significant iron- or twelve years would appear, on all hands, to have
works were established in Pennsylvania, largely by been very great; and many establishments which
Germans. Other sites were developed in New were scarcely commenced at the beginning of that
York, New Jersey, and, to a somewhat lesser de- period, are now in a position to stand a fair com-
gree, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, parison with similar manufactories in England."7
and Virginia. By 1775, America was producing a By 1850, in addition to using the coke which
seventh of the international total of pig iron, made possible delicate designs, America also began
wrought iron, and castings.5 to use different casting methods. Flask casting su-
By the advent of the revolutionary war, the col- perseded the earlier, more expensive loam casting
onies were producing amounts of iron roughly in which patterns could be used only once. The
comparable to Britain, but they were far behind pattern used in flask casting could be used re-
technologically and in the production of finished peatedly and was less time-consuming to make.
wares. There were several key reasons for British Iron founding, the actual process of creating a
superiority. By 1788, more than two-thirds of the cast-iron piece, was defined by Simpson Bolland in
furnaces in England and Wales had switched from The Iron Founder Supplementas "the art of prepar-
charcoal to coke in the blast furnace. This elimi- ing moulds from plastic materials of such a nature
nated a fuel shortage and, because coke's higher as will successfully resist the intense heat of the
temperatures yielded an extremely fluid iron, molten iron ... in which may be formed the object
made possible the production of intricately de- to be produced in iron, the process being com-
signed objects. The British also exploited the more pleted when the iron has been melted, run into the
efficient steam engines instead of waterwheels to mould, and permitted to solidify."8 It was a process
provide air blast in the furnace. In addition, by the that required a high level of skill from ironwork-
178os they were using the cheap, fast, puddling ers, particularly patternmakers, molders, and pud-
process for refining. These three developments led dlers-the labor aristocrats whose work was at the
the British to surpass American iron production. heart of the casting process.
By 18oo and through to midcentury, the British The first step in creating this mold was making
were the biggest iron producers in the world. a pattern. The nineteenth-century patternmaker,
Their iron founders worked to increase the pro-
working largely with hand tools, drafted, carved,
duction and variety of cast-iron products and im- and repaired wooden patterns out of densely
prove quality while reducing manufacturing costs.6 grained hardwood. Different parts of a single
Because Americans had an abundant wood piece of furniture-the arms, seat, back, and
supply, unlike the British, they kept to traditional legs-required separate patterns to create pieces
which would later be bolted together. The patterns
5
Dionysius Lardner, The Cabinetof Useful Arts:A Treatiseon would look like the final products, although they
the ProgressiveImprovementand Present State the would be slightly larger to allow for the shrinkage
of Manufacturesin
Metal, vol. 1 (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and
Green and John Taylor, 1831), p. 54; National Park
Service,
U.S. Department of the Interior, and the 7 Lewis, Iron and Steel,
Ironbridge Gorge p. 23; George Wallis, "Mr. George
Museum in Great Britain, Ironmaking
(Washington, D.C.: Gov- Wallis's Special Report," in New YorkIndustrial Exhibition:Gen-
ernment Printing Office, 1979), n.p.; E. Graeme Robertson and eral Report of the British Commissioners(London: Harrison and
Jean Robertson, Cast Iron Decoration:A WorldSurvey (New York: Son, 1854), p. 39.
Whitney Library of Design, 1977), p. 36; Lewis, Iron and Steel, 8 Simpson Bolland, The Iron Founder
pp. 18-25. Supplement:A Complete
6 Gale, IllustratedExpositionof the Art of Casting in Iron (New York:
Ironworking,pp. 3-10. John
Wiley and Sons, 1901 [1893]), p. i.

of the metal when it cooled. Patterns could be used stone or emery were used to file and scrape the
repeatedly and were quite valuable, particularly castings. Once brought to a polished surface,
because they required great amounts of time and they could be varnished, painted, bronzed, or
skill to create. A patternmaker, in carving a pat- 1
galvanized.
tern, had to know how to attain the proper shape The complete founding process was demand-
by allowing for the speed with which the metal ing, exact, and intricate. Although jobs in the
would run through the mold before it cooled and American iron industry ranged from skilled to un-
solidified. John C. Gobright, a journalist who skilled, some of the most highly trained workers in
toured a Baltimore iron foundry in 1857, wrote of American industry were found in iron casting. Pat-
a pattern house which was used to store patterns: ternmakers, called "carpenters" by the author of
"As it would require years to replace this valuable an 1857 Baltimore guidebook, had to be extremely
property, in the event of its being destroyed, the talented carvers who could draft and repair pat-
building containing it has been constructed with a terns as well as carve them out of dense woods.
strict regard to its preservation in case of fire."9 Puddlers, whose new industrial trade grew out of
Once completed, patterns were taken to the the use of coke as fuel and related technological
foundry. There, workmen pressed the patterns developments, had subcontractor status and paid
into a flask, or box, filled with damp or green sand. their own crews. They were also paid three to four
The sand was then rammed down to compress the times as much as laborers. Molders, whose trade
particles. Removing the pattern left a negative im- had preindustrial roots, served lengthy apprentice-
pression, or mold, in the sand. The molder's skill ships of four to seven years.12
came into play as he monitored the quality of the Manufacturers capitalized on the new technol-
sand. Fred Overman, in The Moulder'sand Founder's ogy practiced by the ironworkers. Observing the
Pocket Guide (1852), noted the problems caused by creation of fine, delicate, and more varied designs,
poor sand. "Too loose open sand, and too much they realized that cast iron could now be mass-
coal or blackening, will make rough, imperfect dull produced and used for objects previously made
castings," he warned. "Fine or strong sand is liable from other materials, such as wood, that required
to cause boiling explosions, or porous castings. more expensive and time-consuming production
Many of the difficulties may be removed by a skill- processes. In America, one of the earliest applica-
ful moulder; still it cannot be expected of him to tions for ornamental cast iron on a large scale was
make smooth sharp castings in coarse sand." Pack- in architecture, and its early use coincides closely
ing the sand tightly around the pattern was also with its use in ornamental furniture. According to
important. Overman wrote, "If the sand is not James Bogardus (18oo0-1874), who constructed
rammed tight enough, the liquid metal is apt to the first complete cast-iron building in America in
break down all the projections in the sand, and by 1848, the use of cast iron in architecture came out
its fluid pressure cause unevenness and swelling of a desire to emulate Italy's "rich architectural de-
of the mould, and in consequence imperfect
signs of antiquity, ... in modern times, by the aid
casting."'0 of cast-iron." Cast iron was a cheap and easily
Molten iron was prepared in a cupola, charged
mass-produced substitute for such expensive mate-
with coke, iron ore, and a limestone flux. As the rials and could even be painted to simulate stone, a
material melted, slag was drawn off through a more traditional construction material. Cast-iron
"slag notch"; when sufficient iron was ac- architecture was lauded by Bogardus for charac-
cumulated, molten material was drawn from the
cupola into a channel to make pig iron. For 11Bolland, Iron Founder
Supplement,p. 137; Gobright, City
smaller, ornamental iron items, these pigs would Rambles, p. 34.
be remelted and poured into the waiting molds 12
Descriptions of different trades within the iron industry
with large ladles. As cast iron was poured, it would are discussed in Daniel J. Walkowitz, Worker
City,CompanyTown.
Iron and Cotton-WorkerProtestin Troyand Cohoes,New York, 855-
flow rapidly through the mold, quickly
hardening. I884 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), pp. 29-47.
Once cooled, the surrounding flask was removed Patternmakers, whom Gobright describes in City Rambles as
and the iron cleaned. Old files and pieces of sand- "carpenters, who are constantly engaged in drafting, making
and repairing wood patterns" (p. 34), are mentioned
by Wal-
9 kowitz who writes of this trade among
John C. Gobright, CityRambles;or, Baltimoreas It Is, Being a immigrants. Most pat-
ternmakers were American-born, but among
Series of Notices Originally Published in the Baltimore Patriot and immigrants, the
CommercialGazette(Baltimore: John W. Woods, 1857), p. largest number of patternmakers were German, known for the
33. woodcarving expertise they had acquired in their homeland
'0 Fred Overman, The Moulder's and Founder'sPocket Guide and for which Germany was famous (Walkowitz, WorkerCity,
(Philadelphia, 1852), pp. 45-46. P. 47).

teristics which would be emphasized repeatedly for and mechanical, hardware, stoves, gratings and
cast iron in the nineteenth century; he claimed for columns,- . .. the RAILWAY and STEAM ENGINE ...
it "unequalled advantages of ornament, strength, serve to show how truly is the Iron Manufacture
durability, and economy."'3 the great patron of Modern art and industry."
Time after time, writers praised the adaptive And, as Albert S. Bolles commented in Industrial
qualities and unlimited uses of cast iron. Its pro- History of the United States (1878), cast iron's uses
motion may well have been a means to come to were "as boundless as a man's desires and almost as
terms with the products of an industrial age, the wide as its own diffusion through nature."15
growing markets created by new industrial tech- Shaped by science and industry, iron could
nology, and a changed consumerism. Cast-iron have infinite uses. Technology could translate the
products are paraded before the reader in Hum- natural into the permanent. "The wings of a fly
phreyHardfeatures'Descriptionof Cast-IronInventions, with its microscopic nerves may be copied in iron,"
a tongue-in-cheek song published in England in wrote Overman in The Moulder's and Founder's
1822 that illustrates the manifold new uses of an PocketGuide, and "green leaves stiffened so as to be
old material and the wonder and trauma of living applicable as patterns," to then be "cast in iron
in a "cast-iron age": without difficulty." In short, Americans like Over-
man felt that manufacture could surpass and even
Since cast-iron has got all the rage,
And scarce anything'snow made without it; improve upon nature. They saw technological de-
As I live in this cast-ironage, velopment as a way of making the most use of
I mean to say something about it. God-given nature and as a sign of progress and en-
There's cast-ironcoffins and carts, lightenment. Edward Everett (1794-1865), a
There's cast-ironbridges and boats, prominent spokesman of his time and a supporter
Corn-factorswith cast-iron hearts, of technology, saw industrial arts as both cause and
That I'd hang up in cast-ironcoats. product of civilization. In an 1831 speech, he said
that these useful arts formed "the difference be-
Humphrey Hardfeatures's descriptions go on to tween the savage of the woods and civilized, cul-
include cast-iron gates, lampposts, bedsteads, ham- tivated, moral, and religious man."16
mers, and grates and to foreshadow what he saw as Advocates of technology and manufacturing
the inevitable future invention of such items as constantly related cast iron to advancement and
cast-iron sheets and cast-iron banknotes.14 civilization. By the 182os, they "identified the
Although other nineteenth-century writings progress of the nation with the progress of tech-
also dealt with cast iron's spectacular growth, not
nology." Like Harvard professor Jacob Bigelow
all were as humorous as HumphreyHardfeatures.To
(1786-1879), they saw technology as the "basis and
some observers, cast iron acquired immense, al- distinction of modern civilization." This link of
most mythical proportions. Samuel Smiles, in his
technology and progress can even be seen in trade
Industrial Biography: Iron Workersand Tool Makers advertisements and in the realm of fine arts. In an
(1863), wrote, "we are in the midst of... the Age 1857 advertisement, Boston Ornamental Iron
of Iron." Edwin Freedley, in Leading Pursuits and Works claimed that iron's use "followed the prog-
Leading Men (1856), saw cast-iron production as ress of civilization in the world, and the amount of
the dominant industry of the nineteenth century: it consumed by any nation at the present day indi-
"Foremost among the leading pursuits of the mid- cates very truly the degree of its advancement in
dle of the nineteenth century are the manufacture the arts and sciences." In 1856, when leading his-
and commerce of iron. Every one can call to mind torical painter Christian Schussele (1824-79) was
how numerous and diversified are its entire uses.
Iron ships, buildings, pavements, and railings-
15 Samuel
iron bridges, aqueducts, cars and statues,- Smiles, Industrial Biography:Iron Workersand Tool
Makers (London: John Murray, 1863), pp. 330-31; Edwin
machinery of a thousand kinds, tools, domestic Troxell Freedley, Leading Pursuits and LeadingMen: A Treatiseon
the Principal Tradesand Manufactures of the U.S.
(Philadelphia: E.
Young, 1856), p. 245; Albert S. Bolles, Industrial History of the
'3James Bogardus, Cast Iron Buildings: Their Construction United States,from the Earliest Settlementsto the Present Time:
and Advantages (1856), reprinted in The Being
Origins of Cast Iron Ar- a CompleteSurvey of AmericanIndustries... Togetherwith a
chitecturein America (New York: Da Capo Press, Descrip-
1970), pp. 4, 5. tion of Canadian Industries... (Norwich, Conn.:
Henry Bill Pub-
The use of cast iron to imitate other
building materials is dis- lishing Co., 1878), pp. 217-18.
cussed in Margot Gayle, Cast-Iron Architecturein New York:A 16
Overman, Moulder'sand Founder's Guide, p. 1oo; Edward
PhotographicSurvey (New York: Dover Publications, 1974), p. v.
14 Everett, Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions, vol. 2, as
Quoted in Palmer, Touch on the Times, pp. 31-32. quoted in Kasson, Civilizing the Machine, p. 46.

commissioned to undertake a major oil painting some savage nation has been rescued from barba-
entitled Men of Progress, his client was Jordan L. rism and won to civilization."'8 The elevation of
Mott (1799-1866), a prominent New York orna- cast iron also occurred along aesthetic lines. This
mental iron manufacturer. In the stately group influenced the forms and finishes assumed by
portrait, a product of Mott's fancy since the nine- nineteenth-century cast iron and the nature of the
teen men pictured were never actually assembled spaces in which they were used.
at one time, Mott positions himself between Peter Cast iron's aesthetic elevation can best be
Cooper and Joseph Henry. Both men were understood by examining the early uses of iron
luminaries in the field of inventing. Cooper, and the forms it took. Although ironmaking had
among other accomplishments, invented the en- begun in antiquity, it was for most of its history a
gine of the first steam locomotive in America. solely manual craft. The metal was scarce, and the
Henry developed the first electrical motor and was quantities yielded were small. Hence its application
the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. was limited to only a few purposes, primarily the
And Bolles attempted to establish a close link be- manufacture of tools and weapons, for which it
tween iron, nature, and goodness when he wrote in was best suited. Not until the fifteenth century
1878 that "iron is found in every rock: it blooms in were the means developed to produce iron on a
the rose and in the maiden's cheek."17 Bolles, like larger scale, and even then most production was of
others of his time, exalted iron and attempted to wrought iron, shaped by hand. Although orna-
refute an ongoing opposition to manufacturing mented items, such as iron screens, gates, railings,
which saw industry as the ruin of nature. and cast grave slabs were produced, iron's uses
These technological boosters also compared were largely utilitarian into the eighteenth century.
cast iron to art. This was especially significant for In England during that period, iron in the home
the nineteenth century, when art and culture be- was limited to hardware, nails, and domestic uten-
came tightly linked and art, somewhat like technol- sils. And in America, into the early nineteenth cen-
ogy, came to be considered a hallmark of civiliza- tury, cast-iron products used domestically were
tion. It was during the Victorian period, as generally service related. The cast-iron pots, pans,
Raymond Williams has shown, that the term culture kettles, and even ranges used in the kitchen were
came to signify the most prized and highest human functional, utilitarian objects, historically manufac-
values and was particularly connected with the tured predominantly for the poor and working
high arts. This civilized and civilizing aspect of art classes. In his Memoirs on Steel and Iron, Rene An-
in the nineteenth century is frequently revealed in toine Ferchault de Reaumur (1683-1757) re-
critiques of cast iron. Reviewing some iron-topped marked that although cast-iron pots were heavy,
tables produced by the famous Coalbrookdale rough, and brittle, the poor used them because
Company, the July 1845 Art-Union (London) wrote they were unable to afford the more elegant and
that "their connexion with Art raises too many expensive copper or bronze vessels. In the pream-
questions to be summarily discussed in a cursory ble of his 1707 patent, Darby stated that with his
notice." Further commenting on a cast-iron garden new technology pots could be cast faster and
chair and card plate, the Art-Union expounded
cheaper, and "in regard to their cheapnesse may
upon the wonder of the objects, the contrast be- be of great advantage to the poore of this our king-
tween the "fragility of patterns of light open work, dome, who for the most part use such ware."19
and the real indestructibility of the material," not-
Following Darby's perfection of the coke-
ing that "it led one to whisper to himself-'Iron
has been conquered by artistic skill, and compelled 18
Neil Harris, "Four Stages of Cultural Growth: The
to do homage to decorative power: the most stub- American City," in Historyand theRole of the Cityin AmericanLife:
born portion of the mineral kingdom has been an- Indiana Historical SocietyLectures, 1971-I972 (Indianapolis: In-
nexed to the realm of taste.' It bore some analogy diana Historical Society, 1972); Raymond Williams, Cultureand
Society,I780-I950 (1958; reprint, Harmondsworth, Middlesex:
to the emotion with which we should hear that
Penguin Books, 1982); "The Mercantile Value of the Fine Arts:
The Bazaar at Covent-Garden, and Exposition of the Products'
of British Industry," Art-Union (London), no. 83 (July 1845):
17 Kasson, Civilizing the Machine, pp. 41, 45. Boston Orna- 224, 223.
mental Iron Works ad in David Bigelow, History of Prominent 19National Park Service,
Mercantileand Manufacturing Firms in the United States ... , vol. 6 Ironmaking,n.p.; Anneliese Grun-
haldt Sisco, Reaumur's Memoirs on Steel and Iron: A Translation
(Boston: David Bigelow, 1857), p. 214. Cooper-Hewitt from the Original Printed in 1722 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Museum, American Enterprise: Nineteenth-CenturyPatent Models Press, 1956), p. 351; Arthur Raistrick, Dynastyof Iron-Founders:
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1984), pp. 8-9; The Darbys and Coalbrookdale (Newton Abbot: David and
Bolles, Industrial History, p. 218. Charles, 1970), p. 22.

smelting process, cast-iron technology experienced and gratify one of the finest qualities of the human
a surge, first in England, and later in America. mind."21
New production methods yielded better and much Numerous iron companies and journals made
larger quantities of iron. Innovative products were objects seem ornamental, not functional but aes-
developed, such as cast-iron cylinders which re- thetic. Trade catalogues stressed the word orna-
placed expensive brass ones in the newly devised mental, emphasizing the decorative, attractive,
steam engine, iron rails on which iron wheels ran, nonutilitarian quality of cast-iron products such as
iron bridges, and the cast-iron columns and beams "Fountains, Garden Vases, Summer-Houses, Set-
used in the first fire-proof factories and mills.20 tees, Chairs, Etc." In a conscious promotion of con-
More fluid iron allowed for intricate shapes previ- spicuous consumption, firms referred to them-
ously unattainable through hand production; selves as "Ornamental Iron Works," to their trade
plentiful, available, and cheap quantities allowed as "Ornamental Iron Work," and to their individ-
for experimentation in ornamental objects as well ual products as ornamental chairs and settees.
as strictly utilitarian ones. Wood's Foundry (later Wood and Perot), of Phila-
To expand cast iron's traditional markets and delphia, advertised in an 1849 business directory
to market ornamental iron to the middle class, cast- with the caption "Ornamental Iron Work" promi-
iron manufacturers had to erase its historically nently displayed next to cast-iron settees and chairs
plebeian connotations. Manufacturers slowly mod- (fig. i). As many firms pointed out, these decora-
ified cast iron's associations with ordnance, tools, tive items were meant to garnish their surround-
labor, agricultural equipment, work in the home, ings. The New York firm of Janes, Fowler, Kirt-
and poorer economic classes. They did this by land, and Company, for instance, wrote that its
creating new mass-produced cast-iron products articles were "for the Embellishment of Country
that were both ornamental and artistic. These Residences" in an 1860 advertisement. In a preface
products were manufactured for formal, largely to their 1873 catalogue, J. L. Mott Iron Works ad-
leisure-related outdoor areas where cast iron was dressed potential customers in a letter appealing to
not previously used. Nineteenth-century advertise- the desire for ornamental, luxury items:
ments stressed the use of ornamental cast iron in
gardens, parks, and cemeteries and extolled its We have much pleasure in presenting you with a new
and much enlarged edition of our IllustratedCatalogue
beauty and indestructibility.
of Statuary,Fountains,Vases, Settees, and other Garden
According to its producers, cast iron was ver- Ornaments.
satile and able to cross into the realm of "high"
Our successin this particularbranchof our business,
culture objects. Manufacturers extolled cast iron as
since the issue of our first Catalogue two years ago, has
a medium which could be adapted to classically convinced us of the growing taste for, and appreciation
artistic forms without the high cost of expensive of, the artistic and ornamental in our manufacture;
materials. Entrepreneurs sought to fulfill Reau- hence we have spared no exertions or expense in getting
mur's dream of 1722, when he prophesied that in up new and original designs; also, in procuring models
the future "the large urns which beautify the and designs from some of the most celebratedmanufac-
flower beds in our gardens will be made of cast tories in Germany,France and England.... [We] think
iron and have the same very graceful that there is nothing here represented which does not
shapes as
those made of bronze and will be just as well possesssome artisticmerit, and certainlynone whichcan
finished." In Cast Iron Buildings, Bogardus illus- offend a refined and cultivated taste.22
trates an elaborate column's capital, writing that it The artistic and ornamental could be achieved
is "far too costly for marble; but which, once ex- in several ways, but primarily through design.
ecuted for a pattern, may be rapidly, and
cheaply Change in cast iron's appearance and aura could
reproduced in iron, with the greatest perfection." be effected through form. The basic form for cast-
Because cast iron as ornament could be iron furniture was derived from indoor hall and
repro-
duced cheaply, it could be made available for mass
consumption. Mixing self-serving prophecies and 21 Sisco, Reaumur'sMemoirs,
aesthetic yearnings, Bogardus wrote of cast iron, p. 354; Bogardus, CastIron
"its general introduction would greatly tend to ele- Buildings,facing p. 3, p. 9.
22 "The Horticulturist
vate the public taste for the beautiful, and to Advertiser,"Horticulturist
andJournal
purify of RuralArtand RuralTaste15 (April 1860): 5; J. L. Mott Iron
Works,IllustratedCatalogueof Statuary,Fountains,Vases,Settees,
etc.for Parks,GardensandConservatories, Manufactured bytheJ.L.
20 MottIron Works(New York:J. L. Mott Iron Works, 1875/80),
National Park Service, Ironmaking, n.p.
p. 1.

228 Winterthur Portfolio
Fig. i. Wood's Foundry and Ornamental Iron Works, Philadelphia. From

O'Brien'sPhiladelphia WholesaleBusiness Directory... 1849 (Philadelphia: John
O'Brien, 1848), p. 188. (LibraryCompany of Philadelphia.)
parlor furniture, both associated with front domes- commissioner at the New York Industrial Exhibi-
tic areas, places where an owner's best pieces would tion of 1853 saw it as "pernicious," undoubtedly
have been used. Although cast-iron seating used a due to its blatant artifice. But while it had its critics,
somewhat different design vocabulary than tradi- bronzing was favored by manufacturers. In trade
tional domestic furniture, its styles followed catalogues, bronzing is listed as an available treat-
changes in indoor furniture. However, unlike in- ment much more frequently than galvanizing (an
door furniture, its elements were almost always application of zinc to iron to prevent corrosion in
drawn from exotic sources-passionflowers, lilies situations where paint would fail rapidly) and was
of the valley, morning glories, ferns, and grapes- 30 to 50 percent cheaper. Bronzing "can be done
and from sources taken from the garden with its at very little cost, and will last and look well for a
connotations of luxury and ornament (figs. 2, 3). long time," wrote Mott in his 1875 trade catalogue,
The choice of these designs reinforced a message adding, "all our Settees, excepting Park Settees,
of embellishment and expense.
The appearance of ornament and luxury could
also be attained by making cast iron resemble met-
als with higher social values. To do this, manufac-
turers treated its surface with bronze powders or
zinc (also called white bronze). The 1870 Workshop
observed that bronzing was necessary because "the
iron color is somewhat unseemly . .. so that it is
usual, though perhaps injudicious, to give it the
appearance of a nobler metal by means of some
covering." This was "usually effected by a coating
of oil or paint, to which while drying, ground
bronze is applied on the raised parts, so as to give
them somewhat of the appearance of real
bronze."23
Attitudes toward bronzing varied. The British Fig. 2. Passionflowersettee. From TheJ. L. Mott Iron
Works(OrnamentalDepartment)Catalogue "A"(New York:
23 "On the Decorative Treatment of
Cast-Iron," Workshop3 J. L. Mott Iron Works, 1897), p. 26 pl. 29-A. (Win-
(1870): 114-15. terthur Library.)

nineteenth century.25 Indeed, many ironworking

firms began by producing bronzes and only later
added or changed to ornamental iron.
Manufacturers manipulated both form and
surface appearance of cast iron in order to disas-
sociate it from traditional work connotations and
make it appear luxurious and ornamental. They
then dictated that it be used in special, formal areas
of the home. The result was an aesthetic elevation
which took cast iron beyond its former associations
with the world of work. New intricate configura-
tions made possible by new technology, new do-
mestic forms as cast-iron furniture, new bronze
surface coatings, and new settings in yards, halls,
porches, parks, and cemeteries transformed the
cultural meaning of cast-iron creations. In its in-
novative decorative shapes, cast-iron furniture
would embellish and civilize its surroundings, ab-
sorbing genteel qualities from the ornamental,
civilized areas it occupied. Through moral and aes-
thetic elevation, manufacturers had called up a
fresh relationship between industry, mass produc-
tion, and consumerism. A completely novel at-
titude toward technology and its products was in-
Fig. 3. Lily-of-the-valley chair. From TheJ. L. Mott Iron
Works(OrnamentalDepartment)Catalogue "A"(New York: culcated. The people who used cast-iron seating
J. L. Mott Iron Works, 1897), p. 35 pl. 49-A. (Win- products in their homes and in leisure-related and
terthur Library.) ornamental areas came to participate in that new
attitude.
the Iron work of which is painted, are very beauti-
fully bronzed." The value of the treatment was not
just aesthetic. Bronzing, like galvanizing, was sup- Design Analysis of Five Settees: Nature and the
posed to prevent rust, the natural process that was Artificial
one of cast iron's biggest drawbacks. Unfortu-
nately, due to rapid oxidation, the application of Changes in iron forms suggest an almost Darwin-
bronze powders was not permanent. Ground ian evolution. As iron, the basest and one of the
bronze is "little durable," noted the Workshop;"it oldest metals, was taken out of traditional service
will in a short time get rusty, especially in the open areas, it was made ornamental and elevated to art
air, and thus entirely lose its metallic gloss."24 through artifice. The cast-iron settee-ultimately
In any case, bronzing, according to period ac- artificial, abstract, and domestic-came to be a tes-
counts, was used merely for highlights and never tament to human growth, progress, and civiliza-
actually to coat the whole form. Aside from retard- tion. It was a three-dimensional illustration of
ing rust, it also added the appearance of value, man's ability to govern and direct nature.
thereby enforcing iron's new upper-class associa- These themes can be examined through the
tions. This made it more clearly ornamental, since settees and the form they took. This section exam-
bronze, unlike cast iron, had a strong tradition of ines the design of five settees which are representa-
decorative use that reached new heights in the tive of the twenty-three design formats identified
in a study of trade catalogues and advertisements.
24
Wallis, New YorkExhibition,p. 42; Sam Tour, "Metallizing The rustic, grape, Gothic, fern, and curtain settees
with Zinc," in C. W. Mathewson, Zinc: The Scienceand illustrate the broad range of design options avail-
Technology
of the Metal, Its Alloys and Compounds(New York: Reinhold Pub- able to cast-iron manufacturers. These five were
lishing Co., 1959), pp. 503-11; Mott Iron Works, Illustrated
Catalogue, p. i; "On the Treatment of Cast-Iron," pp. 114-15;
Charles L. H. Wagner, Text Book of Gildingfor 25 Michael
Sign and Related Shapiro, "The Development of American
Arts (Boston: Wagner School of Sign and Commercial Art, Bronze Foundries, 1850-1900" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard Univer-
1950), p. 65; "On the Treatment of Cast-Iron," p. 115. sity, 1980).

Fig. 4. Rusticcast-ironsettee, PublicGarden,Boston, Mass., 187os. (Societyfor the Preservationof

New England Antiquities.)
chosen because they appear most frequently and conventionalized (or artificial) and domestic ap-
for the longest time in American trade catalogues pearance by the end of the century.
and because surviving examples are known. The rustic settee (fig. 4) is one of the earliest
The five settees are illustrated here in roughly products of mass-produced cast-iron seating
chronological order, starting with the rustic settee manufacture. It appeared frequently in trade
which first appeared in trade catalogues at midcen- catalogues from the 184os through the 189os. Its
tury and is naturalistic in appearance and conclud- popularity seems to have peaked by the third quar-
ing with the curtain settee which first appeared in ter of the nineteenth century; by the 90oos it rarely
the 188os and is more artificial. Like many of their appeared in trade catalogues. Each element of the
genre, these particular cast-iron settees participate form is extremely naturalistic and realistic; each
in design traditions of their time. The grape settee, member represents something organic. Convinc-
for example, exploits the grape motif, which expe- ing oak branches, twigs, and leaves are tied with
rienced great renewed popularity in the mid cast-iron rope. Arms curve like forks in a tree, and
nineteenth century and was drawn upon in rococo- the feet are gnarled roots. Two intertwined snakes
revival furniture ornamentation.26 Most signifi- wrap their tails around the legs below the seat. The
cant, however, is the general transformation in de- seat itself is an organic element. Unlike the
sign from an organic naturalism at midcentury to a geometrical, symmetrically patterned grid gener-
ally used, it is formed by long, curved, knotted
branches (fig. 5).
For some insight into the nature of interest in grapes in
26
Iconographically, the rustic settee conforms to
nineteenth-century America, see George E. Woodward and
F. W. Woodward, Woodward'sGraperiesand HorticulturalBuild- principles of the physical world. It faithfully im-
ings (New York: By the authors, 1865). itates the rustic and appears to be a wooden cre-

Fig*.
Beebe,5. Janes,
and ComFig. rustic settee, New 6. Grapesettee with leaf legs, 1850-1900. Castiron;
Fig. 5. Janes, Beebe, Company, H. 29y/2", W. , D. 1 (Brooklyn Museum,
Museum, gift of Mrs.
York, ca. 1848-6o. Cast iron; H. 33", W. 353/4",D. 22". W. ( M g of Mrs.
Cast in raised letters on the front rail: JANES, BEEBE James . e.)
& CO. N.Y. (Mr. and Mrs. Robert T. Trump: Photo,: -S ,
Winterthur.). |
ation inhabited by serpents. Although realistic, this

settee is fantastic. It is not wooden, and the snakes
are not flesh; it is completely iron, cast in the shape
of branches and reptiles. In the totality of this
transformation, it represents-perhaps of all set-
tees-the most thoroughly imaginative use of the
medium.
The natural appearance of the rustic settee is
also a characteristic of the grape settee (fig. 6), also
called iron settee, grape-pattern settee, grape-vine
settee, and piazza settee. It appeared in trade
catalogues by 1850 and then consistently through-
out the nineteenth century and into the twentieth
century. When space or subject matter limitations
allowed trade catalogues to illustrate only one cast-
iron settee, it was generally the grape settee. Fig. 7. Grape settee with vine legs. From R. Wood and
Different producers effected minor design Company, Portfolioof OriginalDesigns of Iron Work(Phila-
variations in the grape settee by modifying the con- delphia: R. Wood, [1870]), p. 24. (Winterthur Library.)
tour of the back or the leg pattern, which could be
a leaf, a vine, or grape clusters. However, most artificial. Its design is contrived: vines are purpose-
settees were composed of three-dimensional fully contorted to assume the seat contour; legs
bunches of grapes surrounded by connecting assume the shape of flimsy leaves which purport to
leaves, vines, and twisted tendrils. The high-relief bear the heavy, metal settee and whoever sits on it
fruit appears full and ripe. The legs, fashioned or of trellises which are little more than carefully
from leaves, bend with flowing, raised veins. Al- twisted vines (fig. 7). The seat does not conform to
though the grape settee shares a close imitation of the total design. Unlike the rustic settee's seat,
nature with the rustic settee, it is essentially more which is an integral part of the form, this seat

Fig. 8. Gothicsettee, attributedto Janes,

Beebe, and Company, New York, ca.
1852. Cast iron; H. 353/4", W. 465/s", D.
193/8". (Courtesy, the White House,
Washington,D.C.)
works independently. It is a plain, flat, architec- Like the grape, rustic, and many other
tural grid dropped into an organic creation. The nineteenth-century settees, the fern settee imitates
form clearly and instantly reveals the human hand. a specifically identifiable flora (fig. 9). At the same
The Gothic settee uses a naturalistic motif in a time, it works within constrictions identical to those
manner more artificial than the previous settees of the Gothic settee. First appearing in trade
(fig. 8). First patented in England in 1846, the catalogues in the i87os, considerably later than the
form appeared most frequently in American trade other three settees, it drew its design inspiration
catalogues throughout the 185os, 186os, and from the fern which was cultivated as decoration in
187os, appearing less often into the early twentieth the Victorian home.
century. Almost exclusively referred to as a Gothic The fern settee is made of a framework of iron
settee ("piazza settee" is occasionally used), the vines: a crest rail with diamond shapes, arms, legs,
form followed a fairly standard formula, with a and skirt. The frame surrounds an inner area of
curved crest rail decorated with garlands, arms vegetation. A large frond centered at the back sep-
composed of C scrolls and S scrolls, and cabriole arates left and right sides and curls gently over the
legs which terminate in volutes and small pads. It is crest rail. Slightly curved vinelike legs terminate in
the broad cast back, a horizontal tracery design, plain, rounded feet.
that visually dominates and, along with the natu-
ralistic tendencies, gives the settee its name.27
More than the rustic and grape settees, the
Gothic settee's naturalism works within defined
and traditional boundaries. Planes and sections in-
tersect clearly. The back, seat, and arms are fairly
flat. The back lancets are encased by a substantial
crest rail, and the elaborate seat is encased within a
rectangular frame. Nature is present in the form
of foliate motifs and flowing garlands. But the nat-
ural presence is subdued and much less directly
representational than in other seats. It is a settee
with distinctly naturalistic decoration, although not
a totally naturalistic form.
27
Fig. 9. Four-seat fern settee. From SpecialCatalogueof
Metropolitan Museum, Nineteenth-CenturyAmerica, fig. E. T. Barnum's Wire Goods, Wire and Iron Work (Detroit:
119. E. T. Barnum, 1881), p. 3. (WinterthurLibrary.)

Like the other settees, the fern settee is selec- trates a departure from the organic toward the
tively patterned after nature. Ferns with curving domestic. The curtain settee thus represents an
tips and articulated veins are amazingly realistic. attempt to establish indoor characteristics while
But there is a great sense of contortion. The vines remaining outdoors.
that rise from the legs to surround the whole back The curtain settee is the most finalized state-
of the settee, the symmetrical division of the leafy ment of a quality all of these settees share: conven-
back, and the geometrical, pierced, flat seat are tionalism. The conventionalist, argued Jacob Falke
clearly artificial. Like the Gothic settee's crest rail, in the Workshopin 1871, makes vegetable forms
the fern settee's framework of vines surrounds and subservient to his "view and fancy," altering and
regulates the form in an overt display of human transforming them "as his fancy dictates, and as
control. seems most suitable for the decoration of his sub-
The curtain settee takes boundary making and ject, and above all, disposes them in a certain regu-
restrictions one step further (fig. io). Appearing larity and order, for order is the very life of art.
most often in the i88os, 189os, and early 19oos, Thus the artist reigns paramount over nature and
with surviving patented examples dating from the her forms." For cast-iron settee design, this con-
189os and early 1900s (fig. 11), its appearance ventionalism became increasingly pronounced by
postdates that of the other four settees. Called a the end of the nineteenth century, as an overt, ob-
curtain settee, a panel settee, an Americus settee, a vious naturalism was subdued in favor of a more
Columbus settee, or the nebulous ornamental lawn domestic format. Cast-iron furniture was even-
settee, the design employs an assortment of pat- tually brought indoors, iconographically if not
terns within a fundamental model. Basically, it is a physically. Cast iron and through it nature were
rectilinear geometrical form. The back is com- clearly humanly ruled. To Victorian Americans,
posed of three, or occasionally five, rectangular, the metal's subjugation showed "man's patent of
crested panels (fig. 12). Often, the central panel is sovereignty as the lord of creation."28
raised. Each panel frames curvilinear and foliate
designs, scrolls, medallions, and rosettes. The skirt,
several inches high, is flat, pierced, and often
Moorish in character. The legs are fairly plain, and Cast-Iron Furniture's Uses and Environments
the arms, generally perpendicular to the seat, may
swell slightly outward. Front regions, as analyzed by Erving Goffman in
Of all settees, the curtain is the only one to offer The Presentationof Self, are bounded areas for social
defined, marked variations within a stated format. performances such as receiving guests and partici-
For the rustic, grape, Gothic, fern, and other cast-
pating in publicly visible leisure pastimes.29 These
iron settees, variations occurred largely in size, kinds of areas became the locations where cast-iron
finish, and price; design options were minor and furniture was used in the nineteenth century as it
were offered through different companies but moved, in the form of chairs and settees, from
generally not within one company. But for the cur- kitchens and work areas to the ornamental, formal
tain settee, the design of the skirt, seat, arms, crest- areas of the home such as the hall, parlor, porch,
ing, back panels, and other elements could vary and eventually beyond. For trade catalogues and
(fig. 13). other documents indicate that cast-iron seating
As a group, curtain settees differ
drastically in furniture was intended to be used not only in the
form and idea from almost all earlier settees. home sphere but also in more outdoor, although
There is little depth or life to the flat, foliate scrolls
equally homelike, front regions: the park and the
and shallow rosettes whose extremely
stylized nat- cemetery. Its four major attributes-seating form,
uralism borders on abstraction. The form, a series medium, weight, and iconography-directed the
of tightly controlled, finite planes, frames the de- use of the furniture and contributed to its ex-
sign in compartmentalized, almost interchange- change with these environments.
able, panels. The basic form of cast-iron seating furniture
More closely than any other settee, the curtain
conceptually invited people to sit. And settees, with
settee is visually similar to wooden indoor furni-
ture being produced at the same time. Its
angular,
spikey, flat quality closely relates to neo-grec and 28Jacob Falke, "The Naturalistic Element in Ornamenta-
tion," Workshop4 (1871): 1; Freedley, Leading Pursuits, p. 369.
Renaissance-revival furniture. It portrays an arti- 29
Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in EverydayLife
ficiality not seen earlier in the century and illus- (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959), p. 107.

Fig. lo. Peter Timmes Son, curtain settee, Brooklyn, ca. 1895. Cast iron; H. 393/4", W.
431/2", D. 19". (Brooklyn Museum, H. Randolph Lever Fund.)
Fig. 11. Back of crest rail of settee in figure lo, Fig. 12. Center panel of back of settee in figure lo,
showing cast inscription PAT MAY 7 1895. (Brook- showing cast inscription PETERTIMMESSON BROOK-
lyn Museum, H. Randolph Lever Fund.) LYNN.Y. (Brooklyn Museum, H. Randolph Lever
Fund.)

Because cast-iron furniture was so difficult to

move, and because it could be treated to withstand
changing weather, it was well suited to remaining
in place outdoors throughout the year. In contrast
to wooden furniture, which was used outdoors
according to climate and time, cast-iron seating
could be a permanent outdoor feature with little
maintenance.
The fourth attribute is "permanent iconog-
raphy." Because the naturalism portrayed by cast-
iron seating furniture was perfect and permanent
(grapes, once cast, were always at the height of
ripeness), its placement took on new meaning. Left
outside with little maintenance, it would remain
largely unchanged physically, thus appearing to be
permanent. "Cheap, beautiful, and imperishable,"
Fig. 13. Americus, or curtain, settee. From TheJ. L. Mott wrote Janes, Fowler, Kirtland, and Company of
Iron Works(OrnamentalDepartment)Catalogue "A" (New their cast-iron products in 1860.31 Nature
York: J. L. Mott Iron Works, 1897), p. 31 pl. 40-A. (Win-
terthur Library.) changed, mutated, and decayed on a daily and sea-
sonal basis, but cast iron, if painted and guarded
from abuse, would not. Cast-iron seating forms
their capacity to hold more than one person, would presented an immutable nature which perfected
have suggested a special degree of communality the landscape that surrounded nineteenth-century
and sociability. However, the medium of the furni- urban and rural dwellers.
ture dictated certain uses. The very strangeness of The outdoor spaces in which cast-iron furni-
the iron, its hard, cold feel, and its ornamental ture was used reveal a great deal about the cast-
connotations may have discouraged people from iron forms. The nineteenth-century park, the
sitting on cast-iron seating furniture, if not al- rural cemetery, and even the ornamental lawn
together then at least for extended periods of time. were symptomatic of increasing leisure. These
The medium also governed usage by limiting mo- spaces were open to the use of mass-produced or-
bility. Although the nature of cast iron permitted nament, especially in the form of seating furniture.
mass production of intricate, decorative forms, it Moreover, these areas were notably artificial, tran-
had major faults. Its high carbon content caused a sitional, and homelike and were considered to be
brittleness incompatible with the objects' massive marks of nineteenth-century civilization. The spe-
appearance.30 This fragility dictated that cast-iron cial nature of this cast-iron seating, especially its
objects not be roughly used or frequently and role as transitional furniture, assumes charged
abruptly moved. meaning when viewed in the context of these
The third attribute, weight, was due to the mas- places.
siveness of the furniture, which was solidly cast in Designers acknowledged the consciously de-
parts which were then bolted together. Unlike the signed and perfected qualities of the areas where
lightweight, wooden furniture traditionally used cast-iron furniture was placed. Like cast-iron fur-
outside, cast-iron seating was too heavy to be easily niture, the areas also were synthetic creations,
moved. Shipping quotations for settees indicate carefully contrived to seem natural. They were na-
that a settee weighed at least ioo to 140 pounds. ture knowingly transformed and, like cast-iron
Largely immobile, it encouraged a geographical furniture, elevated to art through technology. An-
permanence and a fixed position. Both the direc- drew Jackson Downing (1815-52) expressed this
tion people faced and the view they had were de- idea when he wrote, "Landscape gardening, as an
cided by the furniture's placement. art," consists of "idealizingnatural beauty in a lawn,
park, or garden."32
30 Cast-iron "differs from

pure iron in being crystallized, in 31
not being malleable, . . . and it is likewise extremely brittle" "Horticulturist Advertiser," p. 5.
32 Andrew
(Thomas Webster, An Encyclopaediaof DomesticEconomy [New Jackson Downing, CottageResidences(New York:
York: Harper and Bros., 1845], p. 228). Wiley and Putnam, 1842), p. 68n.

Newly created landscapes acted as transitional in other words, between the house and the
spaces and buffer zones in the nineteenth-century grounds."35
distinction between city and country. Faced with Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) also ad-
growing cities and changing countryside, Ameri- vocated an extended house, bounded by curbs and
cans developed new environments, and old envi- fences instead of walls. "The point I stand for," he
ronments took on transformed meanings. A prime wrote, "is that no house is fit place for a family that
example is the nineteenth-century treatment of the has not both public and private outside apart-
traditional village common. The preindustrial ments-consequently I am bound to regard the
common "took on an added dimension in the mid- fence as a sort of outer wall of the house."36 The
nineteenth century. No longer simply the physical arrangement Olmsted describes is illustrated in
and symbolic center of the community, the com- Augustus Weidenbach's painting of Belvidere, ex-
mon now served as a counterbalance to the visual ecuted about 1858 (fig. 14). At Belvidere, the
monotony and social routine of emerging forms of home of a prominent Baltimore merchant, yard
urban life."33 At the same time, the lawn, park, and and garden are scenes of ornament with a closely
cemetery came to assume similar transitional qual- cropped, carpetlike lawn and fine art sculpture.
ities, as places between city and country, civilized Cast-iron seating, arranged in a parlorlike group-
and uncultivated, with strong links to the home ing, bounded by high vegetation and a curving
and its connotations of morality and goodness. road, imitates an interior setting.
The Victorian lawn, an area of transition be- Cast-iron seating furniture admirably fulfilled
tween the home and the world beyond, was a the need for furniture in a naturalistic apartment.
counterforce to urbanity and an imperative to do- Its domestic form spoke of the interior, its iconog-
mesticity. Although Downing wrote that the raphy of the natural environment outside. On the
"dwelling-house" should be the "central point" in lawn near the house, it made an ornamental transi-
any scene, the surroundings of the residence held tion between the civilized interior and the natural
equal importance. The lawn separated public from world outdoors. Indeed, this outdoor drama of do-
private and linked the artificial house with the nat- mesticity and ornamentation even reached to one
ural landscape beyond. Degrees of transition to the of the most ceremonial and important front lawns
outside world were delineated by mowing or roll- in America: that of the White House. In 1852, the
ing the grass closest to the house and by not mow- presidential residence became the site of sixty or
ing areas farther away. Giving structure and order more bronze-green settees. Some, if not all, were
to the areas nearest the house civilized them and similar to the Gothic settee seen in figure 8.
likened them to the order of the ornamental inte- In the middle- and upper-middle-class Victo-
rior of the house, smoothing the transition be- rian first-floor plan dominant up to 1880, the hall
tween inside and out. In Downing's Cottage Resi- was a semipublic passage or place of transition to
dences, Henry Winthrop Sargent remarked that other areas of the house. With armless single seats,
"the Italian garden is an outside drawing-room." without upholstery, and with plain legs and elabo-
The lawn, in its closely cut form, became a rate, frequently naturalistic backs, cast-iron chairs
metaphor for the carpet inside.34 created for use in the hall were small, cold, and
Architectural motifs found in the lawn area rigid (fig. 15). Like the wooden plank chairs gener-
also moved the house outward and facilitated the ally used in the hall whose "design indicated that
exchange between indoor and outdoor. Downing they were not intended for prolonged sitting, at
suggested that "the characteristic forms of the least not for members of the household or their
building be occasionally repeated near by, in the social peers," because the "qualities that they em-
shape of a few pedestals with vases or other sculp- bodied were visual appeal and utility, not com-
tured objects." The goal was a "harmonious union fort," they were largely ornamental.37
between the architecture and the landscape, or, The small, formal cast-iron chairs indicated for
hall use suited the quasi-public nature of the hall.
33
Thomas Bender, Toward an Urban Vision: Ideas and In-
stitutions in Nineteenth-CenturyAmerica (Lexington: University
Press of Kentucky, 1975), pp. 86-87, 88. 35
Downing, CottageResidences,p. 141.
34
A. J. Downing, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of 36 Frederick Law
Olmsted to Edward Everett Hale, October
Landscape Gardening (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1844), p. 21, 1869, box 14, folder 7, New York State Library,
Albany.
86; Downing, Cottage Residences, pp. 47-48; Henry Winthrop 37 Kenneth L. Ames,
"Meaning in Artifacts: Hall Furnish-
Sargent, "Suggestions Concerning Italian Gardens," in Down- ings in Victorian America," Journal of InterdisciplinaryHistory 9,
ing, CottageResidences,p. 245. no. 1 (Summer 1978): 27, 42.

Fig. 14. Augustus Weidenbach (w. 1858-71), Belvidere.Baltimore, ca. 1858. Oil on canvas; H. 341/2",W. 44". (Maryland
HistoricalSociety, Baltimore,gift of Mrs. WilliamC. Gardner.)
They ideally served as temporary seating for those complete without one or more of them. ... In all
entering from the outdoors. Because of their gar- countries like ours, where there are hot summers,
den and lawn affiliations and their naturalistic a veranda, piazza, or colonnade is a necessary and
iconography, they visually indicated that the hall delightful appendage to a dwelling-house, and in
was not a totally interior place, but one in between fact during a considerable part of the year fre-
the lawn and the home, a transition between the quently becomes the lounging apartment of the
inside and the outside. family."38 Transitional features themselves, the
More blatantly than the hall, the porch, piazza, porch, piazza, terrace, and veranda housed transi-
terrace, and veranda were both outdoor and in- tional furniture-cast-iron seating-which of itself
door spaces. Their specific visual function, wrote acted as a visual link between the interior and the
Downing (much like cast-iron furniture), was to lawn beyond.
"connect, by a gradual transition, so highly artifi- Of all its resting places, cast-iron seating was
cial an object as an architectural dwelling with the least often found in the nineteenth-century park.
more simple forms of natural objects around." But Only settees with cast-iron ends and wooden seats
each of these features also provided additional are specifically named "park seats" in trade cata-
parlor space for the family and as such required logues; perhaps the cheaper wooden seats were
seating (fig. 16). Downing saw any or all as neces- more appealing to park supervisors buying in large
sary extensions of the home: "The porch, the quantities. However, totally cast-iron forms are
veranda, or the piazza, are highly characteristic
38
features, and no dwelling-house can be considered Downing, CottageResidences,pp. 141, 13.

Fig. 15. Hall chair. From"OrnamentalIron Work,"Hor- Fig. 16.J. B. Evansand Company,piazzachair, Smyrna,
ticulturist and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste 7 Del., ca. 1878-85. Cast iron; H. 333/8",W. 16l/2",D. 20o/2".
(1857): fig. 5. (WinterthurLibrary.) Castin incuse letters on the front of the seat:j. B. EVANS
& CO., MANUFACTURER, SMYRNA, DEL. (Courtesy, the
White House, Washington,D.C.)
also included under the heading of "parks" in
catalogues, and they deserve mention here.
With the expansion of urban areas in the by bringing to the park their communal form (the
nineteenth century, there was a growing sense of settee was the form specifically recommended for
need for open spaces.39 The American park move- park use), they visually emphasized Olmsted's in-
ment developed out of a belief that it was the dem- sistence on the park as a democratic communal
ocratic right of urban dwellers who did not possess location for rest by those engaged in leisure
their own private lawns to have the opportunity to activities.
enjoy rural scenery within urban boundaries. Park Cast-iron seating was also extensively used in
designers such as Olmsted and Calvert Vaux the nineteenth-century rural cemetery, an artificial
(1824-95) used remarkably artificial means to space which was a hallmark of Victorian culture.
transform nature into parks to satisfy these needs. Places like Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cam-
The nineteenth-century park they created sup- bridge, Massachusetts, were seen as tangible signs
posedly fostered leisure, morality, and civilization. of social progress. For the living as well as the
It was a transitional space between the city and the dead, and like a park, the rural cemetery was fre-
natural world, artful and artificial. Cast-iron set- quently visited for outings and by tourists. "In the
tees, with their home yard affiliations, reinforced absence of public gardens," wrote Downing, "rural
the role of the park as the city's public lawn. And cemeteries, in a certain degree, supplied their
place."40
39 See Charles Eliot, "The Need of
Parks," in CharlesEliot,
LandscapeArchitect,vol. 1 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1903), 40 Andrew Jackson Downing, Rural Essays (New York:
p. 342. George P. Putnam, 1853), p. 157.

The rural cemetery was no "common grave- According to trade catalogues and horticultural
yard." It was a planned, earthly, gardenlike para- journals, both chairs and settees could be used in
dise which made a transition between the living the "domestic" cemetery setting. The 1857 Hor-
and the dead, between mortality and eternity. It ticulturistillustrates a hall chair, a grape chair, and
bridged the gap between art and nature by uniting rustic and Gothic settees with a caption stating that
them. Downing insisted that for the masses the at- the chairs are "much used in the open air and for
traction of the cemetery "lies in the natural beauty cemetery lots, and the benches . . . are similarly
of the sites, and in the tasteful and harmonious employed."44 In stock advertisements for iron plot
embellishment of these sites by art, . . . [and] a visit enclosures, cast-iron settees are sometimes pic-
to one of these spots has the united charm of na- tured (figs. 17, 18). A late nineteenth-century plot
ture and art,-the double wealth of rural and in a northern New Jersey cemetery clearly illus-
moral associations." A visitor to the nineteenth- trates this domestic configuration (fig. 19). The
century rural cemetery could readily absorb these rectangular enclosure is similar to the shape of the
instructive associations, which were so similar to suburban lot, and the front area is open, much like
those found in the home. Joseph Story (1779- a lawn. The threshold and central monument both
1845) believed that the repositories of the dead bear the family name. To the back are two cast-
"instruct us in the true value of life, and its noble iron grape settees. Within a plot of closely cropped
purposes, its duties, and its destination."4" grass, they rest upon smooth marble slabs which
The cemetery supposedly had all the good at- imitate parlor rugs in a parlor setting.
tributes of the domestic sphere. The domestic asso- Nineteenth-century cast-iron seats were wel-
ciation was enforced by the pervasive use of the coming furniture. With their domestic connota-
community metaphor for the rural cemetery. The tions, they reinforced the cemetery as a place that
Boston Courierin 1831 described Mount Auburn as was not gloomy, but homelike and ornamental. In
"a village of the quick and the silent." An 1891 his address dedicating Mount Auburn Cemetery,
newspaper article in the Illustrated News called Story said, "Let us banish, then, the thought that
Brooklyn's Greenwood Cemetery "One of Life's this is to be the abode of a gloom,-which will
Suburbs."42 haunt the imagination by its terrors, or chill the
The rural cemetery, or more specifically the heart by its solitude."45 Cast-iron seating made the
grave, served as "an inviolable home." The ceme- burial plot a benign eternal home in the city of the
tery gave the family, as one writer noted in Green- dead.
woodIllustratedin 1847, "the solace of feeling that it In the cemetery, cast-iron seating may well have
has secured for itself one guarded and hallowed been reassuring: nondecaying, naturalistic, alive-
spot." The domestic metaphor was also physically looking forms in a place that only disguised death
expressed in family plot layouts, which frequently and decay. In a city of the dead, which expressed a
embodied the home scene. The graves of family timeless image of the city of the living, cast-iron
members were arranged in order of importance in creations were "visible signs of the permanence of
front of, or around, the headstone. In 1870, a the city." They denied the body's decomposition.
landscape writer suggested preserving the "front "Man alone, the master of the creation, does not
of the monument ... for the lot owner or parents; willingly stoop to become a participator in the
the sides and rear for their children." He cau- routine of nature," spoke Dr. Bigelow in an 1850
tioned to leave plenty of room in front of the monu- lecture. "In every age he has manifested a disposi-
ment so that the "front lawn attains a larger size." tion to exempt himself, and to rescue himself,
Plots were often enclosed with iron or stone fences from the common fate of living beings."46 People
as well which demarcated their boundaries.43
41
Downing, Rural Essays, p. 155; Joseph Story, An Address the minimum-size family plot was 15 by 20 ft. Restrictions were
Deliveredon the Dedicationof the Cemeteryat Mount Auburn, placed on fencing materials for the plots. Metal and stone were
Septem-
ber24, 183 (Boston: Joseph T. and Edwin acceptable; wood was not. Stanley French, "The Cemetery as
Buckingham, 1831),
pp. 6-7. Cultural Institution: The Establishment of Mount Auburn and
42 the 'Rural Cemetery' Movement," American Quarterly26, no. 1
Story, Address,app., p. 27; "Greenwood Cemetery-One
of Life's Suburbs," IllustratedNews (New York) (September 15, (March 1974): 48.
44
1891). "Ornamental Iron Work," Horticulturist and Journal of
43 Story, Address, 16; GreenwoodIllustrated Rural Art and Rural Taste 12 (1857): 498.
p. (New York: R. 45
Martin, 1847), p. viii; Jacob Weidenmann, Beautifying Country Story, Address, p. 21.
Homes: A Handbookof Landscape
Gardening (New York: Orange 46 Dr. Bigelow, Mt. Auburn Illustrated(New York: R. Martin,
Judd, 1870), p. 40. In Mount Auburn Cemetery, for example, 1850), p. 30.

Fig. 17. Cemeteryplot with Gothic settee. From StewartIron WorksCompany,IronReservoirVases

Catalogue No. S (Cincinnati, Ohio: Stewart Iron Works Co., [1910]), back cover. (Winterthur
Library.)
chose to extend this desire for immortality to the changing, its bodies forever interred in iron and
furniture of the final home, where cast-iron seat- stone enclosures. Within this perpetual home was a
ing became a deceiving sign of immortality. Like seemingly indestructible furniture, its iconography
urns, vases, sculptures, and monuments to the as lasting as the sleep of the cemetery's inhabitants.
dead, the settees and chairs were part of a perma-
nent, ornamental scene. The cemetery was un-
Conclusion
Cast-iron furniture, a product of technology, art,

and artifice, reveals the ability of the Victorian age
to arrest, elevate, and civilize iron in an ongoing
crusade to subordinate the environment. Iron,
nineteenth-century literature notes in self-congrat-
ulatory tones, was one of the last metals to be con-
quered. To nineteenth-century thinkers, the new
and wonderful metal reflected a civilization with
new and wonderful scientific, industrial, artistic,
and labor capabilities. The material was proof of
the progress with which the nineteenth century
identified itself.
Due to improved technological capabilities, by
the midcentury in America cast iron was widely
available in many forms and was relatively inex-
Fig. 18. Gothic settee. From StewartIron Works Com-
pany, Iron Reservoir Vases Catalogue No. S (Cincinnati, pensive. Elevating the substance helped to make it
Ohio: Stewart Iron Works Co., [1910]), p. 29. (Win- both familiar and desirable; moral and aesthetic
terthur Library.) elevation took place in literature about the iron

Fig. 19. Cemetery plot with cast-irongrape settees, northern New Jersey, ca. 1895. (Photo, Ellen Marie Snyder.)
and in the forms it took. Cast iron's movement outdoor furniture lingered on while it became
from workplaces to formal, decorative areas was increasingly more indoor-looking, artificial, and
another form of elevation. Traditional markets domesticated.
and uses for cast iron were increased and changed, The settees also visually defied decay. Cast-iron
as manufacturers came to terms with a newly ex- seating captured and froze the natural world
ploitable medium, mass culture, and a changing within its contours. The result was something un-
consumerism. As cast iron took the shape of things real: a permanent, immutable nature. Like ever-
found in ceremonially charged, public and quasi- greens which symbolize eternal life, the cast-iron
public areas-the hall, porch, piazza and veranda, seating furniture presented only one appearance,
lawn, park, and cemetery-it entered domains of despite the changing seasons. Putting cast-iron fur-
leisure and luxury. niture outside was like bringing cultivated plants
Within the physical characteristics and iconog- inside, creating, as one nineteenth-century writer
raphy of cast-iron seating lie further clues to its noted, "as near an approach as is possible to out-
nineteenth-century meaning. Seating forms might door summer ... something like Eden."47
have taken any configuration, and yet they took Cast-iron furniture held sway in two worlds si-
specific shapes which most often were overwhelm- multaneously. Its domestic furniture form took the
ingly naturalistic shapes borrowed from the gar-
47John M. Prest, The Gardenof Eden: The Botanic Gardenand
den. This choice shows a willingness to employ
the Re-creation of Paradise (New Haven: Yale University Press,
artifice to exploit nature, to toy iconographically
1981), p. 68; Edwin A. Johnson, WinterGreeneriesat Home (New
with the transformation of nature. The idea of York: Orange Judd, 1878), p. 17.

inside out; its naturalistic form brought the outside and barbarism. Lawns, in the tradition of land-
in. It provided for what Olmsted and Vaux called scape gardening, brought the indoors out and the
"domestic in-door and out-door private life."48 outdoors in, offering a cultivated space between
The environments of cast-iron seating were home and the world.49 Parks were transitions be-
spaces that took on changed meanings in Victorian tween nature and city. And the rural cemetery
America. As cities grew, as industry progressed, mediated not only between the rural and the urban
and as wilderness diminished and was cultivated, but also between the earthly home and the heav-
open spaces such as the lawn, park, and cemetery enly home, between life and death.
took on new meanings. "Nature, methodized more Iron had begun existence as one of the earth's
and more," tamed, civilized, put under a micro- natural elements. The forms cast iron took in seat-
scope, "replaced private and personal contact with ing borrowed from the natural and the domestic.
wilderness." The home, considered by many When placed outdoors, these objects brought with
nineteenth-century writers as a focal point in life, them messages of domesticity. Cast-iron furniture
became a haven against rapidly evolving industry, regulated and civilized these outside spaces, just as
urbanism, and barbarism beyond its boundaries. the natural world was controlled within its own
As smaller areas were created and property be- contours. Part of the urban landscape, they repre-
came more defined with enclosures, the home with sented, in nineteenth-century terms, the suprem-
its trappings of order and morality was ideologi- acy of Victorian culture and technology: a final
cally extended farther outward. Placing furniture victory over nature.
permanently outside took the civilizing forces of
domesticity even farther outward, eventually into
the park and cemetery where, as in the home, 49 Howard Mumford
Jones, The Age of Energy: Technology
there was a sense of transition between the cul- and Republican Values in America, I776-900o (New York: Pen-
tivated and the chaotic and between civilization guin Books, 1976), p. 27. For an excellent discussion of domes-
ticity and the home as symbol of nineteenth-century American
culture, see David Schuyler, "Home as Castle: Architecture and
the Ideology of Domesticity," Susquehanna6 (1981). An intrigu-
48
Olmsted, Vaux, and Company, PreliminaryReportupon the ing article on the development and role of the lawn in America
ProposedSuburban Village at Riverside, Near Chicago (New York: is J. B. Jackson's "Ghosts at the Door," Landscape i, no. 2 (Au-
Sutton, Browne, 1868), p. 27. tumn 1951).


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Victory over Nature

Victorian Cast-Iron Seating Furniture

Ellen Marie Snyder

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Fig. i. Wood's Foundry and Ornamental Iron Works, Philadelphia. From

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nineteenth century.25 Indeed, many ironworking

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Fig. 4. Rusticcast-ironsettee, PublicGarden,Boston, Mass., 187os. (Societyfor the Preservationof

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ation inhabited by serpents. Although realistic, this

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Fig. 8. Gothicsettee, attributedto Janes,

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Because cast-iron furniture was so difficult to

30 Cast-iron "differs from

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Fig. 17. Cemeteryplot with Gothic settee. From StewartIron WorksCompany,IronReservoirVases

Cast-iron furniture, a product of technology, art,

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