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(MANUSCRIPT BOOK.) Miss Ann P. Postley's Album [from title-page]. One engraved plate at front, stating "Album" printed by Caleb Bartlett, manuscript title-page and 68 pages of verse and sentiments, in various hands. Pages interleaved with a few vignettes, including 6 illustrations by Charles A. Baudouine. 8vo, modern binding of 1/2 polished calf gilt over patterned boards; contents variously but lightly soiled and worn. Accompanied by the original deed to Baudouine's furniture making business on Broadway and Grand Streets, New York City, 1879. New York, 1828
a charming album gifted to ann postley, wife of noted new york furniture designer charles baudouine, including verse and illustrations by him. The work is dated five years before Ann and Charles were married and contains poems and aphorisms of friendship and virtues embellished with ink and watercolor illustrations. Baudouine was born in New York City and opened his first cabinet making shop on Pearl Street circa 1830. He specialized in Rococo Revival furniture at a time when highly ornate Victorian style was in fashion and he quickly became renowned as one of New York's premier cabinet makers in the decades after Duncan Phyfe. In 1840, Cyrus West Field, the paper industry magnate and father of the first transatlantic telegraph cable, purchased a Gramercy Park townhouse and asked Baudouine to furnish it, which marked the first time in the city's history that a professional designer was hired to decorate a private residence. Baudouine's growing wealth led him to invest in real estate and he amassed a rather large estate which, after his death, resulted in familial lawsuits and gossip fodder for the New York society columns. The bound sheaf of deeds and legal papers that accompany the album refer to some of the properties held by the Baudouine estate.
