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From Norwalk to Newark
Newark artisan John Jeliff earned a national reputation for his furniture
His name was one of the biggest in the history of nineteenth-century New Jersey furniture. Born in Norwalk, Connecticut in 1813, John Jeliff began a six-year apprenticeship with a New York City woodworker at the age of fourteen. Thirty years later, Jeliff had opened his own furniture shop on Broad Street in Newark. The business grew rapidly. Upon his death in 1893, the New York Times remembered Jeliff as "the pioneer of the furniture manufacturing industry in Newark."
Jeliff developed a national reputation for revival-style rosewood parlor sets such as the sofa and chairs seen here. After the Civil War, eastern goods spread nationally with the help of expanding railroad networks. Upper-class consumers in southern cities clamored for the popular furniture styles that Jeliff produced. Close proximity to Newark made New York an important market as well. Reminiscent of ancient Greece, the carved female figures, or caryatids, were a popular element on so-called Neo-Grec furniture of the 1860s. The cross section of the chair reveals a common upholstery stuffing – horse hair. |