The Collections Quarterly, sent out four times a year, features new acquisitions and loans as well as select items from the Archives, art and artifacts collection, and the Fenyes-Curtin-Paloheimo collections.
Archives Feature
The Archives houses the Cheesewright Studio’s portfolios on furniture, wall papers, home accessories, and examples of decorated rooms and residences. Edgar Cheesewright was from England and worked for a well-known interior decorating company in New York in 1905. After moving to the Los Angeles area, he started his own interior decorating business in 1918. He had important clients from as far north as Washington state to as far east as St. Louis.
Although he favored traditional style furniture for furnishing homes, he was not against modern decorating style and furniture. This is evident from the portfolios in the special collection that contains pictures of modern furniture such as the chairs seen here. John Bancroft, an employee of Cheesewright Studios, compiled these portfolios. Cheesewright wrote an article about his preferences and opinions on whether modern decorating styles would replace traditional styles in an article in the California Arts & Architecture issue of September 1938.
For those who would like to view the portfolios, please visit the Research Library & Archives. PMH is open from Thursday to Sunday,1:00 to 4:00 p.m. No appointment is necessary.
Collections Feature
The Mystery of the Horn Chair
Tucked away in a quiet corner in the attic of the Fenyes Mansion, the horn chair has long been an object of fascination for the Museum staff. Recent research in the Archives revealed some of its history, but left us with more of a mystery to uncover.
Horn furniture, thought to evoke the spirit of the pioneering west, enjoyed a period of popularity in the United States from the 1880s through the early decades of the twentieth century. Horns were fashioned into chairs, tables, and hat racks, as well as smaller accessories such as knife handles, canes, and buttons.
This horn chair was given to the Museum by Mrs. James Elms in 1958. James Elms grew up on a small ranch in Los Angeles and moved to Altadena in 1903. Soon after the donation of this horn chair was recorded in the curator’s files, C.F. Shoop, a local history correspondent, published an article about it in the Pasadena Star-News (January 26, 1958). He claimed that the chair had been made for Don Juan Bandini by his ranch hands.
Is there any truth to this claim? The renowned Don Juan Bandini (1800-1859) was hugely influential in the development of Southern California. The fashion for horn furniture did not emerge until twenty years after his death, and although the chair is rustic in style, it was certainly constructed by a skilled furniture craftsman rather than a ranch hand.
Many of Don Juan’s children settled in the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley. Arturo Bandini, the eighth son of Don Juan, had the strongest connection to Pasadena. His 1903 Greene & Greene-designed home evoked the spirit of the California ranchos. A longhorn steer chair would not have looked out of place in the Arturo Bandini home, although the chair does not appear in any of the known interior photos. For now, the mystery of the horn chair remains unsolved.
The horn chair is currently on display in Crown City Jubilee: Celebrating Significant Anniversaries in Pasadena.
Fenyes Feature
The Girl, the Chair, and the Painting
The next time one visits the Fenyes Mansion, notice the Louis XV-style bergère, or armchair, positioned near the piano in the drawing room. Now look across the room to the painting above the fireplace. Young Leonora, Eva Fenyes’ granddaughter who was nicknamed Babsie, is sitting in the very same chair.
Currently, the chair is covered in ivory damask. Its crest and seat rails, arms, and legs are applied with gold leaf. When artist Richard Miller used this chair as a prop, it was upholstered in the floral brocade seen in the painting. Not an artistic interpretation, the original fabric is verified in a photograph probably taken in Eva Fenyes’ garden studio.
Babsie strikes an unwilling pose for this photograph and looks a bit sullen. A note on the back verifies her mood, “L.F.C. very cross being painted by Richard Miller, Pasadena.” Miller, who occupied the studio for nine months in 1916-17, noticeably softened Babsie’s expression and backdropped her portrait with an Impressionistic Pasadena landscape.
Images, top to bottom: Miller, Richard E. (1875-1943). Pensive Portrait,1916-17. Oil on canvas, 36 x 34 in. (2000.019.0098); Chair, Louis XV-style giltwood bergère, circa 1910 (PMH 2000.019.4055); Photograph, Leonora Frances Curtin posing for painting by Richard Miller, 1916-17. (FCP.102.4)
Pasadena Museum of History, 470 W. Walnut Street, Pasadena, (626) 577-1660 or visit www.pasadenahistory.org.
