Benjamin Randolph (cabinetmaker)

Benjamin Randolph (1721—1791) was an 18th-century American cabinetmaker who made furniture in the Queen Anne and Philadelphia Chippendale styles.

His family, originally named Fitz-Randolph, were Quakers who fled religious persecution in New England and settled in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

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.

[3] 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."

He joined fellow cabinetmaker Thomas Affleck in the major commission to make furniture for John Cadwalader's Philadelphia city house.

[3] In a 1927 article in The Magazine Antiques, dealer Samuel W. Woodhouse, Jr. identified six spectacularly-carved Philadelphia "sample chairs," each different and thought to be unique.

[10] Chippendale chairs attributed to Randolph appear in the painting William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River (1876–77) by Thomas Eakins, and several other works by the artist.