An update on Robert Wellford's compo.(Collectors' notes)(composition ornament )

Mark Reinberger, the author of the comprehensive Utility and Beauty: Robert Wellford and Composition Ornament in America (2003), which we reviewed in July 2004, has written to us about an exciting discovery made since the book was published. The material, a mixture of finely ground lime, resin, and glue that was forced into carved molds to create very hard ornament that could be glued onto wooden objects, was popular during the federal period in the United States. Mr. Reinberger writes:

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Composition ornament (or compo) constituted the medium for much applied architectural ornament from the 1780s until the 1820s. Its best known manufacturer in the United States at that time was Robert Wellford of Philadelphia. Because he sometimes signed his work, many composition elements can be identified as Wellford's manufacture. More than a hundred mantelpieces containing his work are recorded, along with a few architectural elements, most notably at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware, where his compo appears on doorway and window trim from Wellford's own house and shop in Philadelphia. However, he also advertised that his compo could be used in ship's cabins, on molds for iron castings, and by gilders, the last suggesting that it was appropriate for furniture. Indeed, composition ornament is widely known to have been used on tables and, above all, picture and looking-glass frames, but until the discovery of the looking glass illustrated above, none by Wellford had been identified. Now in the Detroit Institute of Arts, the looking glass bears a decorative panel that Wellford called "Tablet to the Memory of the deceased George Washington" on a bill of sale dated 1804 and which he presumably made sometime after Washington's death in 1799. Signed "R. WELLFORD" below the ...