What was advertised via subscription proposals in revolutionary American 250 years ago today?

“THE GENTLEMAN AND CABINET-MAKER’s ASSISTANT.”

As the summer of 1775 approached, Robert Bell, the prominent bookseller and auctioneer, partnered with John Norman, an architect engraver, in publishing an American edition of Abraham Swan’s British Architect: Or, the Builders Treasury of Stair-Cases.  Norman, who had arrived in Philadelphia just a year earlier, advertised the forthcoming volume in the Pennsylvania Journal in March and advised that prospective subscribers who considered supporting the project could examine printed proposals “with a specimen of the plates and letter press” at his house on Second Street.  He also pledged that the “names of the subscribers to this useful and ornamental work will be published.”  The book eventually included, according to its title page, “upwards of One Hundred DESIGNS and EXAMPLES, curiously engraved on Sixty FolioCopper-Plates,” some of them previously on view.  The “NAMES OF THE ENCOURAGERS,” as promised, appeared on four pages, clustered together by the first letter of their last names.  In the copy in the collections of the American Antiquarian Society, the list of nearly two hundred subscribers had a prominent place immediately after the title page and before the introduction, though binders may have placed the list at the end in other copies.

The copies at the American Antiquarian Society, the Getty Research Institute, and the Library of Congress also include subscription proposals for The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Assistant with the “DRAWINGS by the ingenious JOHN FOLWELL, Cabinet-Maker; and the ENGRAVINGS by JOHN NORMAN,” bound to face the title page.  While the proposals may have also circulated separately as a broadside, it seems that Bell and Norman seized an opportunity to market a similar book to subscribers and other readers of their edition of British Architecture, an audience that already demonstrated interest in the subject matter.  The proposals carried a date – June 20, 1775 – but could have been paired with British Architecture any time after that.  The proposed volume would feature even more illustrations, “Two Hundred Designs and Examples … with proper Explanations in Letter Press,” at a cost of fifty shillings.  Subscribers were expected to pay fifteen shillings in advance and the remainder “on the Delivery of the Book.”  Folwell and Norman intended to take it to press as soon as subscribers ordered three hundred copies.  As with the British Architect, “The Names of the SUBSCRIBERS to this useful WORK will be printed” as an acknowledgment of their support.  Folwell and Norman accepted subscriptions in Philadelphia, as did Bell and Thomas Nevell “at the Sign of the CARPENTERS-HALL,” but so did local agents in Annapolis, Baltimore, Charleston, and New York.  The list of associates in other towns further suggests that the subscription proposals did indeed circulate separately in an effort to enhance demand.