Benjamin Randolph (cabinetmaker)


Benjamin Randolph was an 18th-century American cabinetmaker who made furniture in the Queen Anne and Philadelphia Chippendale styles. He made the lap desk on which Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence.

Biography

He was born in Monmouth County, New Jersey. His family, originally named Fitz-Randolph, were Quakers who fled religious persecution in New England and settled in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He may have apprenticed under the cabinet-joiner John Jones, from whom he rented lodgings. He married Anna Bromwich on February 18, 1762 at St. Paul's Church, Philadelphia, and they had two daughters, Mary and Anna. An inheritance of his wife's enabled them to buy property, and an investment in a French and Indian War privateer may have provided the capital for him to set up his own cabinetry shop in 1764.
His business of supplying lumber and making windows and architectural carvings expanded in 1767, when he bought a shop on Chestnut Street and advertised himself as a "cabinetmaker." The London-trained carvers Hercules Courtenay and John Pollard were part of this shop; as were joiners or apprentices Benjamin Kendall, Joseph Alston, Peter Lasley, John Hanlin and John Maggs. The account book also lists a number of rented enslaved Africans.
Beginning in 1769, furniture by Randolph bore the label:
All Sorts of CABINET- AND CHAIR-WORK MADE and SOLD by BENJN. RANDOLPH, AT the Sign of the Golden Ball, in Chestnut-Street, PHILADELPHIA.

He had a number of prominent clients, including John Dickinson, Captain John Macpherson, Michael Gratz, and Samuel Rowland Fisher. He joined fellow cabinetmaker Thomas Affleck in the major commission to make furniture for John Cadwalader's Philadelphia city house.
Among those who rented lodgings from him were George and Martha Washington, and Peyton Randolph. Jefferson rented lodgings in 1775 when a delegate to the First Continental Congress, and again in May 1776 at the beginning of the Second Continental Congress. He later described the lap desk made for him by Randolph:
"It was made from a drawing of my own, by Ben. Randall a cabinetmaker in whose house I took my first lodgings on my arrival in Philadelphia in May 1776. And I have used it ever since."

Early in the American Revolutionary War, Randolph provided crates for the Continental Army. He later closed his shop and joined the war effort. He put his shop and tools up for sale in 1778, in preparation for retirement.
He married Mary Wilkinson Fennimore, and retired to his property in Burlington County, New Jersey. He died in December 1791, and was buried in the burial ground at St. Paul's Church, Philadelphia.

Sample chairs

In a 1927 article in The Magazine Antiques, dealer Samuel W. Woodhouse, Jr. identified six spectacularly-carved Philadelphia "sample chairs," each different and thought to be unique. One had descended through Randolph's family with a history of his having made it, and Woodhouse attributed all six to Randolph. Another of the sample chairs matched the chair shown in Charles Willson Peale's Portrait of Lambert Cadwalader. There continues to be debate over whether the sample chairs should be attributed to Randolph or Affleck.
Five additional hairy-paw-foot side chairs from the Cadwalader set were found in Ireland in 1973. These are presumed to have been owned by Dr. Charles E. Cadwalader, John Cadwalader's great-grandson, who permanently moved from Philadelphia to England in 1904. A seventh chair from the set was found in Italy in 1982. The Philadelphia Museum of Art attributes its Cadwalader chair to Randolph. The Metropolitan Museum of Art attributes its Cadwalader chair to Thomas Affleck.

Examples of his work

Chippendale chairs attributed to Randolph appear in the painting William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River by Thomas Eakins, and several other works by the artist. The chairs were lent to Eakins by his friend Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell.