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Benjamin Randolph (1721 - 1791) was an 18th-century American cabinetmaker who made furniture in the Queen Anne and Philadelphia Chippendale styles.〔(Circa-1780 portrait miniature of Benjamin Randolph ) from Philadelphia Museum of Art.〕 He made the lap desk on which Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence.〔(Benjamin Randolph ) from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello.〕 ==Biography== He was born in Monmouth County, New Jersey. His family, originally named Fitz-Randolph, were Quakers who fled religious persecution in New England and settled in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He may have apprenticed under the cabinet-joiner John Jones, from whom he rented lodgings. He married Anna Bromwich on February 18, 1762 at St. Paul's Church, Philadelphia, and they had two daughters, Mary and Anna. An inheritance of his wife's enabled them to buy property, and an investment in a French and Indian War privateer may have provided the capital for him to set up his own cabinetry shop in 1764.〔''Philadelphia: Three Centuries''.〕 His business of supplying lumber and making windows and architectural carvings expanded in 1767, when he bought a shop on Chestnut Street and advertised himself as a "cabinetmaker." The London-trained carvers Hercules Courtenay and John Pollard were part of this shop; as were joiners or apprentices Benjamin Kendall, Joseph Alston, Peter Lasley, John Hanlin and John Maggs. The account book also lists a number of rented enslaved Africans.〔 Beginning in 1769, furniture by Randolph bore the label: ''All Sorts of CABINET- AND CHAIR-WORK MADE and SOLD by BENJN. RANDOLPH, AT the Sign of the Golden Ball, in Chestnut-Street, PHILADELPHIA.'' He had a number of prominent clients, including John Dickinson, Captain John Macpherson (owner of the mansion "Mount Pleasant"), Michael Gratz, and Samuel Rowland Fisher. He joined fellow cabinetmaker Thomas Affleck in the major commission to make furniture for John Cadwalader's Philadelphia city house. Among those who rented lodgings from him were George and Martha Washington, and Peyton Randolph (no relation).〔 Jefferson rented lodgings in 1775 when a delegate to the First Continental Congress, and again in May 1776 at the beginning of the Second Continental Congress. He later described the lap desk made for him by Randolph: ''"It was made from a drawing of my own, by Ben. Randall'' () ''a cabinetmaker in whose house I took my first lodgings on my arrival in Philadelphia in May 1776. And I have used it ever since."''〔Jefferson to Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge, November 14, 1825, in Edwin M. Betts and James Bear, Jr., eds., ''Family Letters of Thomas Jefferson'' (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1966), pp. 461-62.〕 Early in the American Revolutionary War, Randolph provided crates for the Continental Army. He later closed his shop and joined the war effort. He put his shop and tools up for sale in 1778, in preparation for retirement.〔 He married Mary Wilkinson Fennimore, and retired to his property in Burlington County, New Jersey. He died in December 1791, and was buried in the burial ground at St. Paul's Church, Philadelphia.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Benjamin Randolph (cabinetmaker)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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