EASTERN CONNECTICUT, 1750-1770

According to family tradition, this dressing table was a wedding gift upon the marriage of Judge Ebenezer Devotion and Eunice Huntington in 1764. The table has descended in the family along the same lines as the portraits of John and Jonathan Devotion (see previous lot) as well as the double portrait of Eunice Huntington Devotion and her daughter Eunice, which is now in the Lyman Allyn Art Museum. As such, it is an important document of furniture produced in the eastern border area of Connecticut ranging from Woodstock in the north to Norwich and coastal New London in the south. The surviving account book of Judge Ebenezer Devotion, beginning in 1775, enumerates a number of regional craftsmen that the Devotions patronized including Ebenezer Tracy, Beriah Green, Theodosius Parsons and Felix Huntington. While Huntington, in Norwich, was a dominant supplier of furniture for the Devotions, this dressing table does not relate to the higher style furniture attributed or documented to him (see Christie's New York, The Collection of Marguerite and Arthur Riordan, Stonington, Connecticut, January 18, 2008, lot 588). Neither does it relate to a group of case pieces associated with the Stonington-Saybrook area characterized by angular knees and a lack of knee returns (see Ibid., lots 581 and 585), suggesting that it may have been made in or near Windham, closer to the Devotions' home. Nevertheless, the dressing table is a highly successful example of rural furniture design combining sweeping lines and a whimsical heart motif with an overhanging top of charming proportions.