“Leather Apron Men: Benjamin Franklin & Philadelphia’s Artisans,” an illustrated talk by Jay Robert Stiefel on the “Handiworks” of Franklin and other admired artisans of his period
Hall of Graduate Studies, Room #217A, Yale University, 320 York Street, New Haven, CT
Thursday, April 2, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
Jay Stiefel is a lawyer, collector and historian of American decorative arts. He studied history at the University of Pennsylvania and Christ Church, Oxford, and is a frequent lecturer in this country and abroad, most recently at Winterthur and the American Museum in Britain. His writings include: “Philadelphia Cabinetmaking and Commerce, 1718-1753: the Account Book of John Head, Joiner” (American Philosophical Society, 2001), available gratis online at http://www.amphilsoc.org/bulletin/20011/head.htm; “Rococo & Classicism in Proprietary Philadelphia” (the Library Company for the Welcome Society, 2008); and articles on the library’s clocks and scientific instruments, the artist-turned-banker F. M. Drexel, and Philadelphia colonial craftsmen such as pewterer Simon Edgell and silversmith Joseph Richardson, Sr. His research on the influence of the circus on 18th-century American decorative arts is to be published this spring.
