Blog — Jonathan Fisher RSS

Over the past few weeks I’ve been photographing the furniture and tools of 19th-century Maine furniture maker Jonathan Fisher. This is part of a four or so year long research project I have been working on to tell the story of this rural polymathic Harvard-trained minster/artisan. For more information about this fascinating research, you read about it here or refer to my piece in American Period Furniture in 2014. The book is under contract to be published by Lost Art Press in 2017 and thanks to grants from both the Early American Industries Association and the Society of American Period Furniture Makers, I have been able to dig deep examining the numerous surviving objects as well as research the broader historical context in which...

  I have been looking forward to this moment for three years now. When I began researching the furniture making of Jonathan Fisher, I had no idea just how much surviving material there was. The house he built is filled with furniture he made with a collection of tools he used to build them all recorded in his surviving diary entries. That’s amazing for any period cabinet or chair maker but especially for a rural one. Back in the 1950s and 60s, when his house was being turned into a museum, many of the objects were sold to a sister institution to ensure reliable preservation. Although the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, ME owns the majority of the furniture and...