.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This blockfront desk is a symbol of worldliness, conspicuous consumption and success. Ledger pages removed from an 1813 account book that record sales to New York and Boston of mahogany and salt are glued to the interior of the top drawer of this piece. These pages indicate that the owner of the desk was involved in mercantile pursuits, well-traveled, and able to afford the luxury of a blockfront desk, from which much of his business was likely transacted.
The desk is fashioned with a stepped interior common among Massachusetts examples, and is one of the few examples with a blocked front and matching blocked lid. The labor-intensive and expensive feature of additional blocking was borrowed from desks produced in Newport. Patrons in Salem selected this extra embellishment more often than their Boston counterparts, although Boston examples are also known. The case is constructed without a giant dovetail, a technique often associated with furniture made in Boston. The lack of this feature, as well as the presence of the blocked lid, supports a Salem attribution for the manufacture of this desk. Strong commercial ties that linked Salem with Newport, both of which were locations for quarterly meetings of the Quaker community, were vehicles for the transmission of styles and ideas between these regions. See Lovell, "Boston Blockfront Furniture," Boston Furniture of the Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville, 1974), pp. 77-133.
The desk is fashioned with a stepped interior common among Massachusetts examples, and is one of the few examples with a blocked front and matching blocked lid. The labor-intensive and expensive feature of additional blocking was borrowed from desks produced in Newport. Patrons in Salem selected this extra embellishment more often than their Boston counterparts, although Boston examples are also known. The case is constructed without a giant dovetail, a technique often associated with furniture made in Boston. The lack of this feature, as well as the presence of the blocked lid, supports a Salem attribution for the manufacture of this desk. Strong commercial ties that linked Salem with Newport, both of which were locations for quarterly meetings of the Quaker community, were vehicles for the transmission of styles and ideas between these regions. See Lovell, "Boston Blockfront Furniture," Boston Furniture of the Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville, 1974), pp. 77-133.