Artist Profile
Joseph Henzey
- Lived:
- 1743-1796
- Worked:
- Philadelphia, PA
- Style:
- Windsor Chairmaker
Joseph Henzey was a competent, successful Quaker craftsman. Henzey was born about 1743 and p[robably completed his apprenticeship in the mid 1760s. The earliest record of his working career occurs in the 1767 assessment, which indicates that he paid only a 2s. head tax because he was both unmarried and without taxable property. He was either beginning his own business or working as a journeyman. Henzey began to sell Windsor furniture on his own account by 1772, when he married and also took two apprentices. Both boys, Isaac Covert and David Stackhouse, the latter a Bucks County Quaker, later established their own chairmaking businesses. By the early 1790s Henzey was also a steward of Pennsylvania Hospital. At Henzey's death in 1796, Quaker cabinetmaker Daniel Trotter provided his coffin.
[Excerpt from American Windsor Chairs by Nancy Goyne Evans, p.89]
