Hintz (or Hints), Johann Frederick

at ‘The Porcupine’, Newport Street, near Leicester Fields, London; cabinet maker (b.1711 – d. 1772)

Hintz was a German immigrant and a member of the Moravian brotherhood in London. It is not known when he arrived in London, but in 1737 he was chosen as one of the ten founder members of the Moravian Church. In June the following year he travelled back to Germany in company with the furniture maker Abraham Roentgen and the preacher John Wesley, among others. Before leaving he advertised in the Daily Post, 22 May 1738, the sale of ‘a choice Parcel of Desks and Book cases of mahogany, tea tables, tea chests, tea-boards etc. all curiously made and inlaid with fine figures of Brass and mother-of-pearl. They will be sold at a very reasonable rate, the maker Frederick Hintz, designing soon to go abroad.’ By this time he was established at ‘The Porcupine’ in Newport Street.

Hintz settled briefly at Herrnhag in 1742 and thereafter travelled repeatedly between London and Germany. At times he worked closely with Roentgen and in 1742 was described as his ‘professional colleague’.

In April 1747 he married an Englishwoman, Ann Williams (b. 1725) in Marienborn, Germany. Later that year the couple were back in London where their first child, Anna Maria, was born in June 1751. The baptismal record described the father as a cabinet maker. Their first son, George Frederick, was born in July 1754 and a second, John Robert, in March 1756. Further children followed, but it is not known how many survived to adulthood. Hintz’s business probably conflicted with his evangelising mission as member of the brotherhood because from 1750 he participated less frequently in the church’s activities.

He was apparently without his own house at this time, lodging with John Senft, a German born shoemaker. By February 1752 he had opened a new workshop at the corner of Ryder’s Court and Newport Street, not far from his old premises. A bill, dated 23 August 1753, records the sale of card tables, chairs and looking glasses to a ‘Mr Larish’ at a price of £20 8s. As well as making furniture Hintz made musical instruments. In 1748 he made a harpsichord for Nevill’s Court and in 1760 signed a bass violin. In 1763 he was described as ‘Guittar-maker to her Majesty and the Royal Family’, and it is possible that by this date furniture was a secondary occupation.

Image

Copyright (Attribution/Credit)

British Museum

Trade card of Frederick Hintz at his house the corner of Ryders Court Leicester-Fields, 1766 [D,2.2607]. © The Trustees of the British Museum

Ann Hintz died in 1763 and Frederick in 1772. He was buried in the Moravian cemetery at Chelsea. He died intestate and the administration of his estate was granted to George Dunbar, Esq, who was also a guardian of Hintz’s son, Robert, then aged sixteen.

A number of brass inlaid tables and other furniture has come to light as a result of the Channon exhibition of 1993, and some of these attributed to Hintz on the strength of his 1738 newspaper advertisement, although documentary evidence is lacking. To date (2019), no documented furniture survives.

Source: DEFM; Gilbert & Murdoch, John Channon and brass-inlaid furniture 1730-1760 (1993); Boynton, ‘The Moravian Brotherhood and the Migration of Furniture Makers in the Eighteenth Century’, Furniture History (1993); Gilbert & Murdoch, ‘Channon Revisited’, Furniture History (1994), pp. 65-85; Graf, ‘Moravians in London: A Case Study in Furniture Making, c. 1735-65’, Furniture History (2004).