Verplanck Room, woodwork ca. 1767. American. Purchase, The Sylmaris Collection, Gift of George Coe Graves, by exchange, 1940 (40.127).

Styles of the Late Colonial Period

All the furniture and other objects in this room are gifts of descendants of Samuel Verplanck; the paneling came from the west parlor of the Colden house in Orange County. These elements have been brought together to provide a setting for the objects that is appropriate in date and location and to provide a sense of how late colonial, or "Chippendale," furniture was typically arranged in a room.

The fully paneled fireplace wall and the paneled dadoes on the other walls are good examples of mid-eighteenth-century American woodwork in the Anglo-Palladian style, a classical idiom that was disseminated through inexpensive architectural pattern books at the time the house was constructed. The fluted pilasters reflect the classical orders, which were followed in determining the room's proportions. The fireplace wall has a simple yet elegant "earred" mantelpiece and overmantel, flanked by a closet with hooks at the back for hanging clothing (on the right) and a china cupboard (on the left) decorated at the top with an unusual shell.

The Verplanck suite of mahogany parlor furniture, probably purchased about the time of Samuel's return to New York City in 1763, consists of a card table, six side chairs, and an upholstered settee, all made in the same New York City shop. The suite is distinguished by the matching design of the cabriole legs on each piece and is the only known matching set of pre–Revolutionary War New York parlor furniture. Two other chairs in the room, in front of the windows, are in a more richly carved Gothic style inspired by the work of the English cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale (1718–1779), whose designs were widely reproduced in America, and probably date from the 1770s. The room also features a William and Mary–style japanned secretary and a gilded Rococo looking glass, both from England—reminders of the luxurious imports that graced the most opulent colonial interiors. Numerous other family possessions, including a Chinese-export porcelain dinner service and a pair of eighteenth-century porcelain hearth jars, were also donated by the Verplanck family for display in the room.