No. 10 Charter Oak Hotel Cook Stove
Featured in the Excelsior
Stove Works 1860 price list.
Wood engraving by William Mackwitz, 1860.
Photographs and Prints
MHS Collections
NS34353
According to the legend, in 1687, a dubious representative of the British crown attempted to steal away with Connecticut’s charter ( nullifying the colony’s right of existence). As the story goes, through a clever slight of hand, the charter was swept away and safely hidden within a grand, stately white oak tree--thus paving the way for the “Charter Oak” to stand as a powerful symbol of nature as a defender of freedom. In fact, Connecticut adopted the image as the emblem for the state quarter.
Connecticut State Quarter featuring a Charter Oak
The “Charter Oak” was such a powerful icon that it transcended the bounds of Connecticut, appearing as a decorative flourish on a line of popular cooking stoves designed by G.F. Filley and manufactured by the Excelsior Stove Works in St. Louis. The stove pictured was crafted in 1860, as the northern and southern states were entering a bloody and contentious Civil War. As an artifact, it represents a form of Colonial Revival--in which conservative American designers looked nostalgically toward the past, mimicking and adapting styles popular during the Revolutionary War and the early Republic. Perhaps offering some reassurance during an era of great national strife ,the “Charter Oak” décor invokes a time when the nation was not rent asunder but rather was united and working toward a common cause.
Organized by the Virginia Historical
Society with additional support from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter
Foundation and the
Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Changing Exhibitions Fund, American. Support
in St. Louis is provided by The Stanley and Lucy Lopata Foundation
This exhibition has been made possible in part
by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Great Ideas Brought to Life.
