Cyrus Flint, an experienced furniture retailer, partnered with James H. Jones to open a furniture warehouse on Royal Street in 1845. The firm was soon receiving regular shipments of furniture from New York. Advertisements describe C. Flint & Jones as a wholesale and retail dealer of furniture, mattresses, damasks, cords and tassels, sofa springs, casters, and other hardware for making, upholstering, and installing furniture. By the late 1850s, an increasing amount of the firm’s inventory was arriving on steamboats from up the Mississippi River. Many of these ships held crates of furniture from Cincinnati, home to the Mitchell & Rammelsburg Furniture Co. In 1866 Robert Mitchell and John and James Craig announced that they were taking over the business of C. Flint & Jones as a branch of the Mitchell & Rammelsberg Furniture Co.
Lambrequin curtains with cornice from Butler-Greenwood Plantation, St. Francisville, LA
1859; silk brocade, silk and wool passementerie, tin
probably made in France or England
C. Flint & Jones (New Orleans)
courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art, museum purchase, William McDonald Boles and Eva Carol Boles Fund and partial gift of Mary Minor Butler Hebert, 2014.02.17a,b
Invoice from C. Flint & Jones to Harriet Matthews, of Butler-Greenwood Plantation, for items including “5 window draperies” (reproduction)
1859
courtesy of Hill Memorial Library Special Collections, Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, Charles L. Mathews Family Papers, box 5, U 225, MS 910 (reproduction)