Davis Collamore & Co.

Davis Collamore & Co. was a high-end New York City importer of porcelain and glass, headed by Davis Collamore (7 October 1820 — 13 August 1887^[1]). The firm, rivals to Tiffany & Co. and Black Starr & Frost, commissioned designs from Copeland Spode and Thomas Minton Sons, that featured hand-painted details over transfer-printed outlines and often rich gilding. Porcelain by Haviland and Villeroy & Boch also appear with the firm's marks. Davis Cullamore was among the first to recognize the beauty and value of American-made cut glass and also offered Rookwood Pottery.^[2]

Davis, born in Scituate, Massachusetts to a family settled there since 1639, was the youngest of twelve children. At the age of sixteen he moved to New York City to be employed by his brother Ebenezer, an importer of glass and china, at 171 Broadway. In 1842 he established his own business, at 595 Broadway.^[3]

His brother Gilmore Collamore (1834—1888) came to join him in 1854. Gilmore established his own business in 1861. Gilmore Collamore & Co., in premises at 731 Broadway in 1861, occupied premises in Union Square before taking two storeys of showrooms in The Wilbraham, a fashionable block of bachelor flats at Fifth Avenue and 30th Street, that opened in 1890 to about 1920, when new premises were constructed for the firm at 15 East 56th Street^[4]

Davis Collamore & Co.'s premises also matched the moves uptown of fashionable New Yorkers. An ad for tea and dinner services advertised from the firm's early premises, at 479 Broadway, just below Broome Street, appeared in Harper's Weekly, 25 April 1863. Retail shops were opened at Broadway and 21st Street, then at 48th and Fifth Avenue and finally at 7 and 9 East 52nd Street. There was a branch at the fashionable resort of Newport, Rhode Island.

In 1864 he purchased seventy acres at Orange, New Jersey and retired to the country house he built there.

Notes

1. ^ Funeral notice, The New York Times, 16 August 1887
2. ^ The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, "Cullamore, Davis".
3. ^ The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, "Cullamore, Davis".
4. ^ Locations noted in Landmarks Preservation Commission: The Wilbraham, 8 June 2004.