Revelations from The Ledger of an Early American Hartford Cabinetmaker

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• Zoom and In-Person Lecture presented by furniture scholars Kevin G. Ferrigno and Christine Ritok
• Wednesday, November 2, 2022, 7:00 p.m.
• Suffield Senior Center, 145 Bridge Street, Suffield
• RSVP: rsvphistory@gmail.com or at www.suffieldhistoricalsociety.org/contact

The 2016 discovery of the ledger of Lemuel Adams (1769-1850), a partner in the prominent Hartford cabinetmaking firm Kneeland & Adams (1792-1795), reveals new information about furniture production and business practices in Hartford County in the 1790s. The ledger includes the shop’s financial accounts, biographical information, customer lists and shop output. Long-time furniture researcher Kevin G. Ferrigno and Suffield Historical Society curator Christine Ritok will discuss new insights revealed from their research of this fascinating document.

Submitted by Jackie Hemond
The tattered cover of the Lemuel Adams Ledger

Christine Ritok is a newly appointed curator at the Suffield Historical Society. She holds a BA in history and art history from Kalamazoo College, and an MA from the Parsons School of Design/Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Institution in the History of Decorative Arts & Design. Before joining the Historical Society, she was the Associate Curator at Historic Deerfield, the Associate Curator for Sculpture & Decorative Arts at the Museum of the City of New York, held curatorial positions at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and the Detroit Institute of Arts, and was a part-time faculty member of Parsons School of Design. Her research interests include 18th and 19th-century American furniture craftsmanship, ornament, and upholstery, European and American sculpture and decorative arts, and the history of collecting. While at Historic Deerfield, her main project was cataloguing Historic Deerfield’s permanent collection of furniture, incorporating recent scholarship and close object study.

Kevin G. Ferrigno is Vice President and General Counsel of DATTCO, Inc., a diversified regional transportation company. Among other affiliations, Kevin is a former Connecticut Historical Society (CHS) trustee and formerly chaired the CHS Collections Steering Committee. Together with former Windsor Historical Society curator Christina K. Vida, he continues a long-term study of Windsor cabinetmaker George Belden and is working with Christine Ritok on a long-term study of Central Connecticut River Valley cabinetmakers who worked during the Federal period, including Aaron Chapin, Aaron Colton, and the Kneeland & Adams shop, all of Hartford. Recent publications include Hartford’s Hockey Stick Stands, published in the September 2020 edition of the Maine Antiques Digest.

Christine and Kevin have presented on Hartford area Federal cabinetmaking at the Winterthur Museum Garden and Library, Historic Deerfield, The Connecticut Historical Society, and The Webb-Deane Stevens Museum.

The mission of the Suffield Historical Society is to collect, preserve, and stimulate interest in the history of Suffield and the region and to actively share it. The Society hopes to inspire a sense of community, as well as to provide an understanding and appreciation of Suffield’s past.

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