HARTFORD, CT (PNAN) – Scheduled to close Sunday, October 22, 2023 at the Wadsworth Museum of Art is an exhibition of Thomas Day (1801-1861) works that highlights an 1855 wooden bureau made by Day featuring his hallmark undulating curves and fashionable Grecian style motifs.
Day was a master craftsman and free man of color working in North Carolina in the decades prior to the Civil War. By 1850, his cabinetmaking workshop in Milton, located near the Virginia border, was the largest in the state. He earned a reputation as the premier cabinetmaker in North Carolina by customizing each piece of furniture to suit his client’s taste; no two pieces were alike.
The Bureau was one of 47 pieces of furniture, potentially the largest order of his career, made for David Settle Reid, a US senator. Day fulfilled this enormous request due to his newly mechanized workshop, making him an industrial pioneer in the Piedmont region.