Daniel King, Sr., was the principal brazier working in Philadelphia during the second half of the eighteenth century. He established his South Front Street foundry in 1760 and within a decade had earned a reputation for products that rivaled English or Continental imports. Between 1770 and 1771 he executed for General John Cadwalader what must have been one of his most important domestic commissions. Surviving bills enumerate purchases of door hardware and fireplace equipment. The latter consisted of six pairs of andirons, including a “Pare of the Best Rote (rate) fier Dogs With Corinthen Coloms, ” for which Cadwalader paid King twenty-five pounds, approximately the same amount he paid Charles Willson Peale that same year for two three-quarter-length portraits of his parents.

Technical notes: The front legs are brazed to the plinth base. The plinth, base, fluted column, and urn are cast and vertically seamed, and the cap is a separate component, all secured by an internal rod.

Regrettably, Cadwalader’s andirons are not known. There is only one signed set of andirons from King’s foundry, to which the Bayou Bend set is most closely related.

Related examples: Fennimore 1996, p. 134, no. 54.

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.