# Cabinet > Herter Brothers - ca. 1883 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/herter-brothers/herter-brothers-cabinet-met-1999-79/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-05 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Herter Brothers - **Date:** ca. 1883 - **Medium:** Maple, with painted and gilded surface, bevelled glass, silk velvet, brass - **Dimensions:** 64 1/2 x 71 x 14 1/2 in. (163.8 x 180.3 x 36.8 cm) - **Object type:** Furniture - **Period:** American, Gilded Age (1880s) - **Current location:** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The American Wing - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A large maple display cabinet, painted ivory and gilded, made about 1883 for Oliver Ames, the Massachusetts governor and shovel-fortune heir who spent the previous decade paying off his father's Credit Mobilier debts. The Metropolitan Museum's own catalogue attributes it only cautiously, 'Attributed to Herter Brothers,' because the piece carries no signature, stamp or label, and the firm's one surviving business archive does not begin until 1891, eight years after this cabinet was made and after both founding brothers had left the company (Christian Herter died the same year the cabinet is dated).The case itself argues for the attribution more than any document does: reeded columns, dentil moldings and carved swags borrowed from eighteenth-century Neoclassicism are set against asymmetrical Japanese-inspired shelving and a gold-flecked, lacquer-imitating surface, exactly the stylistic synthesis Herter Brothers is independently documented producing for Gilded Age clients including William H. Vanderbilt and, in a pointed irony, Ames's own former courtroom adversary Jay Gould. Where the cabinet actually stood, in Ames's Boston town house or his family's country estate, and where it spent the century between his ownership and its 1999 purchase by the Museum through the New York dealer Margot Johnson, Inc., are both left honestly unresolved here rather than filled in with invented detail. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **ca. 1883** Oliver Ames (1831-1895), industrialist and Governor of Massachusetts `[documented]` (commission) The Metropolitan Museum's own catalogue entry states the cabinet was made for Oliver Ames. Ames is independently documented as a Herter Brothers client through a room decorated by the firm in his Boston town house at 355 Commonwealth Avenue, built in 1882-1883, though the Museum's own text does not specify which of Ames's two residences held this particular cabinet. - **ca. 1883-by 1999** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner, sale, exhibition or publication has been located for this cabinet between its manufacture around 1883 and its appearance with the New York dealer Margot Johnson, Inc. by 1999, a gap of well over a century. The Ames family's Commonwealth Avenue house left the family's ownership in 1926, which is the most plausible but entirely undocumented point at which the cabinet could have left the household. - **by 1999-1999** Margot Johnson, Inc., New York, with a gift from Robert L. and Ann R. Fromer `[documented]` (purchase) The Metropolitan Museum's credit line records the acquisition as a purchase funded by the Robert L. and Ann R. Fromer Gift together with a gift from the dealer Margot Johnson, Inc. Margot Johnson specializes in American Gilded Age decorative arts, including Herter Brothers furniture, and is documented working directly with the Museum's curator of American decorative arts. No purchase price or division of the two gifts has been published. - **1999-present** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (acquisition) Acquired 1999 in honor of the 75th anniversary of The American Wing, which had opened to the public in 1924. Published the same year in the Museum's Bulletin, Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 1998-1999. The cabinet is currently listed as not on view. ## Open questions - What document, if any, would directly tie this cabinet to Oliver Ames's commission? No bill, ledger entry or piece of correspondence naming it has been located, and the firm's one surviving business archive only begins in 1891, after the cabinet was made. - Which of Oliver Ames's two documented residences, the Commonwealth Avenue house in Boston (built 1882-83) or the older family estate in North Easton, actually held this cabinet? The Metropolitan Museum's own wall text names the client but not the room, and this record's preference for the Commonwealth Avenue house rests on a date coincidence, not a stated fact. - Where was the cabinet between about 1883 and its appearance with a New York dealer in the 1990s? No owner, sale or exhibition has been identified for a gap of well over a hundred years. - Who supervised the Herter Brothers workshop between Christian Herter's 1881 retirement and his 1883 death, the exact window in which this cabinet is dated? No source consulted names a specific manager or designer for that interval. - What price did the Metropolitan Museum pay in 1999, and how was it divided between the Robert L. and Ann R. Fromer gift and the Margot Johnson, Inc. gift? Neither figure has been published in the sources consulted for this record. ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art, 'Cabinet' (Attributed to Herter Brothers), object 16576, accession 1999.79, collection catalogue entry, including curatorial description and provenance/marks tabs. - [2] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, raw object record for object 16576 (accession 1999.79): dimensions, medium, credit line, constituent and attribution-prefix data, and image set. - [3] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, object 20608 (Cabinet, accession 2014.530.2), consulted only to compare the Museum's own attribution language across two different Herter Brothers cabinets. - [4] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, object 9724 (Wardrobe, accession 69.140a, b). - [5] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, object 5027 (Side Chair, accession 1994.80). - [6] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, object 16719 (Armchair, accession 1999.488). - [7] Society of Architectural Historians, SAH Archipedia, 'Oliver Ames Mansion,' 355 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, on the building's architect, construction dates and its Herter Brothers-decorated room. - [8] Back Bay Houses, '355 Commonwealth,' documented history of the Oliver Ames town house from its 1882 building permit through its 1926 sale to the National Casket Company and later uses. - [9] The Trustees of Reservations, 'Governor Oliver Ames Estate History,' on the separate North Easton, Massachusetts family estate and its demolition by 1909. - [10] Wikipedia, 'Herter Brothers,' for the firm's founding dates, client list and the White House paper label detail. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with the Howe/Frelinghuysen/Voorsanger catalogue and the Winterthur finding aid where they overlap. - [11] Wikipedia, 'Oliver Ames (governor),' for Ames's biography, the Credit Mobilier inheritance and the Jay Gould legal battle. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a scholarly biography of Ames or the Ames family papers. - [12] Winterthur Library, Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, finding aid for Herter Brothers Business Papers (Col. 93), on the archive's 1891-1907 date range and the firm's history under Gustave, Christian and William Gilman Nichols. - [13] Chipstone Foundation, American Furniture 1995, review of Katherine S. Howe, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen and Catherine Hoover Voorsanger, Herter Brothers: Furniture and Interiors for a Gilded Age (Harry N. Abrams with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1994), on the catalogue's sourcing method. - [14] Antique Trader, 'Buying or selling? Be sure you avoid the attribution pit,' on the general market dynamic of unmarked furniture acquiring unsupported maker attributions. General antiques-trade source, not specific to Herter Brothers. - [15] Sotheby's, 'Masterpieces by Louis Comfort Tiffany, Featuring The Ann and Robert Fromer Collection,' on the Fromers' collecting focus in Tiffany, Art Nouveau and Art Deco decorative arts. - [16] Phillips, 'Turning the Centuries: Works from the Ann and Robert Fromer Collection,' further background on the Fromer collection. - [17] Maine Antique Digest, coverage of Margot Johnson's activity in the American Gilded Age furniture market and her documented work with Metropolitan Museum curator Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen. - [18] Wikimedia Commons, 'File:Christian Herter (1839-1883).png,' portrait reproduced from The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume V, 1907, page 321. - [19] Wikimedia Commons, 'File:Wardrobe, Herter Brothers, 1875-83, Metropolitan Museum of Art.JPG,' photograph by Wikimedia contributor Wmpearl. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. 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