Cabinet minister: How a poor Highlander became a celebrated designer in the US

SCOTS-BORN cabinetmaker Duncan Phyfe is a well-known name in America today yet few people in Scotland have ever heard of him. So how did a poor immigrant born in the Highlands become an American icon, whose furniture graces the White House?

Described in his adopted homeland as “America’s Thomas Chippendale”, Phyfe was born in 1770 and emigrated with his family from their home near Inverness to Albany, New York, in the 1780s. More than 200 years later, Phyfe’s legacy as “America’s most famous cabinetmaker” is being celebrated with a major retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The exhibition includes a number of Phyfe’s original works, a watercolour painting of his Manhattan shop and warehouse, a toy box he made for his daughter Eliza and his snuff box with a thistle decoration on its lid. Also on show is his tool chest, which has been owned by Phyfe’s family since his death in 1854.

“Phyfe is really well known in America. He was very influential,” says Peter Kenny, curator of the exhibition at the Metropolitan. “Collectors have bought his work, museums have bought it, he’s never gone away. Why? Because his furniture was beautifully made, it showed superb craftsmanship and incredible attention to detail.”

Though a Phyfe chair could be bought for £1,500 or £2,000 today, his more unusual pieces command big prices; a rare griffin marble-top pier table recently sold at Christie’s in New York for $242,000 (£153,000). Phyfe’s signature pieces included pillar and claw tables and lyre-backed chairs with lion or dog’s paw feet.

When he arrived in New York, Phyfe was known as Duncan Fife. As a teenager he began a seven-year apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker. By 1793, he was living and working in Manhattan where he was listed in the New York City directory as a joiner. As his business grew, he dropped the job title joiner in favour of the grander sounding cabinetmaker and changed the spelling of his name from Fife to Phyfe. “He maybe wanted to give his name a little more panache,” says Kenny.

By the early 19th century, his exquisitely detailed work was in demand across the US and clients included some of the nation’s wealthiest families. In the Green Room in the White House, used for small receptions and entertaining guests over cocktails, there are several of his pieces, including work tables, side chairs and window benches. For the fashion-conscious, Phyfe was the place to go to buy the most stylish furniture on the market. In his novel Tender is the Night, F Scott Fitzgerald gives one of his wealthy characters a dining room suite designed by Phyfe.

Among his most important and influential clients was Robert Donaldson whose family, like Phyfe’s, had immigrated to the US from Scotland. Donaldson’s father had settled with his family in North Carolina where he became a wealthy businessman. When he died, Robert Donaldson, still a young man, inherited his fortune. He spent a large chunk of it on furniture from Duncan Phyfe.

Phyfe did not routinely sign his pieces but he did put his signature on the furniture he made for Donaldson. “The furniture we have of Donaldson’s is literally the only furniture we have which Phyfe signed in his own hand. Phyfe knew it would be important. Donaldson was a young man of refined tastes and interests.” Well-to-do visitors to Donaldson’s home would admire the furniture and, enquiring about its designer, they might place an order themselves.

So popular did Phyfe’s furniture become that by the early 19th century people would wait for hours in his downtown Manhattan store to buy furniture and in the, often vain, hope of being granted a meeting with the distinguished maker.

In a letter to her cousin, one customer, Miss Sarah Huger, wrote: “Mr Phyfe is so much the United States rage, that it is with difficulty now, that one can procure an audience of even a few moments.” She goes on to describe waiting “with a dozen others, at least an hour in his cold shop and after all, was obliged to return home, without seeing the great man”. When finally she did speak to Phyfe, he replied that, while he had taken on the commission, he could not tell her how much the furniture would cost until it was completed. “To be able to say I’ll get it to you in a month but I can’t tell you how much it will cost is an enviable position to be in,” says Kenny.

Phyfe kept up to date with the latest trends in France and Britain and, for more than half a century, he ran the most celebrated cabinetmaking establishment in the United States. His success enabled Phyfe, his wife and their six children to live comfortably in an elegant townhouse across the street from his Fulton Street store and workshop.

Rich plantation owners in the American south were among his most lucrative clients, as they sought to show off their wealth to family, friends and associates by outfitting their grand homes in his latest designs.

“Phyfe didn’t mind lavishing time and attention to detail on his furniture, which can be corrosive to profits, but he also didn’t mind charging a lot. He gets a reputation as New York’s premiere cabinetmaker. He’s very expensive,” says Kenny. A chair by Phyfe might have sold for $130 in the early 1830s, around 50 per cent more than other distinguished cabinetmakers were charging.

Those who couldn’t afford the price tag on a Phyfe original bought reproductions of his work.

As business flourished, Phyfe became one of the most important men in New York. He employed up to 100 people and was worth a reported $300,000 towards the end of his career. A shrewd investor, he used his profits to buy up property, at one time owning a dozen properties in New York. Kenny says: “He was pretty smart with money. He would collect a rent from the properties. Among other things it meant that he never had to take on a business partner, which was often the downfall of cabinetmakers.”

After he retired in 1847, Phyfe continued to work with his hands, often making toys and furniture for his family, including a dressing box which is included in the Metropolitan’s exhibition.

Personal anecdotes provided by Phyfe’s grandsons to his earliest biographer, Ernest F Hagen, describe Phyfe as a “very plain man, always working and always smoking a short pipe” and “very strict in his habits”, insisting that all the members of his family were in bed by nine o’clock each night.

Kenny says: “He loved his family. But he was also incredibly industrious, he was all work. He had a passion for it and you can see that passion in his work.”

Background

• Phyfe was born Duncan Fife on 27 April 1770. He changed the spelling of his surname after emigrating to the United States.

• His work is displayed in the White House Green Room and mentioned in everything from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Karl Shapiro’s poem The Fly to F Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night.

• Throughout the first half of the 19th century, Phyfe made neoclassical furniture for the social and mercantile elite of New York, Philadelphia, and the American South.

• Many apprentices and journeymen exposed to his distinctive style after a stint serving in the Phyfe shop copied elements of the master cabinetmaker’s designs, helping to create and sustain this local school of cabinetmaking.

• Demand for Phyfe’s work reached its peak around 1815–1820, when he was in such demand that he was referred to as the “United States rage”.

• Because Phyfe’s furniture was seldom signed, yet was widely imitated, it is sometimes difficult to determine with certainty which works he actually made.

• A neo-classicist at heart, Phyfe remained the dominant figure in his trade into the 1840s. His brother Laughlin and son James joined him in the business.

• Phyfe retired in 1847 at the age of 77 and died in 1854.

• Duncan Phyfe: Master Cabinetmaker in New York is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York until 6 May