Artsman

Description

My interest in Daniel Pabst (1826–1910) evolved from a fascination with what seems to me to be the odd, ungainly aesthetics of most Philadelphia decorative arts design, which led me to Frank Furness and through him to Modern Gothic. This haphazard approach is not academic because it relies almost entirely on aesthetics, but it did bring me in close contact with a few outstanding pieces that, for one reason or another, are now attributed to Pabst. It also means I have not paid much attention to his less stylish pieces that probably made up the bulk of his production, nor to those other Philadelphia furniture makers whose work stood cheek by jowl with Pabst’s in the crowded domestic, institutional, and commercial interiors that existed in Philadelphia and other American cities during the second half of the nineteenth century. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is planning an exhibit about Pabst, so they are gathering any and all new information that has surfaced since 1977 when David Hanks and Page Talbott summarized the earlier Calvin Hathaway research in a museum bulletin. The museum has come up with an innovative and cost-efficient method of compiling this new material: They have asked private and institutional collectors of Pabst objects to be curators and catalogue their own holdings for the museum’s records. The products of these efforts, as they stand at the moment, were presented for review at a preliminary, closed study day held on October 20, 2008. The results were revelatory in good and not so good ways. Dastardly dealers were not invited to attend until it became apparent that they have been the primary keepers of the flame since 1977. Curators in their ivory towers and private collectors busily piling up the wherewithal to purchase Pabst were not the ones with their feet on the ground at obscure auctions, in dusty attics, and in far-flung antiques shops. I got through the door in part because I stumbled over the circus wagon at the Met (which has come to represent the pinnacle of Pabst’s achievement), but mostly because a major collector asked me to catalogue and present her Pabst objects. Now I have never been a professional curator, which is liberating because I have no responsibility for what I don’t know or should know—as another song (I seem to have more than a song in my heart) goes, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” As it happened, it was probably not a good idea to invite dealers, as they often embarrassed the curators who presented Pabst objects because the dealers knew more about style, original condition, provenance, and significance than the museum professionals. Whatever one may think about the aesthetic qualities of a sideboard now at the Art Institute of Chicago, it undeniably has many details significant to Pabst research. When questioned about the curiously brilliant finish, the curator revealed that she knew nothing more or less than what the dealer who sold it to the museum had said in her sales pitch. I discovered the cabinet, now at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, in a flea market where it was being used to display collectible beer cans.

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