Lot Essay
The shallow aperture silhouetting deeply carved rosettes, the relief carved scrollboard applique, and fully undercut shell-drawer of this high chest places it firmly within a group of extraordinary carved rococo case forms made in Philadelphia from the end of the 1760s into the 1780s. Included in this group are such masterpieces of Philadelphia carving and cabinetmaking as the Van Pelt High Chest at Winterthur (see Downs, American Furniture: The Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods (New York, 1952), fig.195); the Hollingsworth Pair of High Chests and Matching Dressing Tables, one matched set variously in the collection of and on loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the other matched set offered in lot 501 (see Sewell, et. al. Philadelphia: Three Centuries of American Art (Philadelphia, 1976), pp.140-141, fig.109); the Moulder High Chest at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (see Heckscher, American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Late Colonial Period: The Queen Anne and Chippendale Styles (New York, 1985), pp.253-255, fig.165); the Potts High Chest in the Karolik Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (see Hipkiss, The M. and M. Karolik Collection of Eighteenth-Century American Arts (Cambridge, 1941), pp.58-59, fig.33, and illustrated here); and a Chippendale High Chest of Drawers formerly in the personal collection of Mabel Brady Garvan which sold in these Rooms, 18 January 1997, lot 221.
The forms of this group are characterised by a similarly arranged scrollboard applique with distinctive beading on the leaf-carving. Each of these high chests also shares an almost identically undulating, pierced and undercut shell surrounded by lush and intertwined foliage and tendrils at the lower drawer. The only case form of this group which bears a similar central shell-carved upper drawer is the Hollingsworth High Chest, and it is on the basis of this retention of the upper shell-drawer (versus losing that drawer so as to allow the applied scrollboard carving) as well as the development of the skirt that a possible chronology of these forms emerges. To this end, the Hollingsworth High Chest, with its upper shell-drawer, barren scrollboard and simple cyma and shell-carved skirt, may be the forerunner of this group of elaborate case forms. Following this, the ex-Garvan High Chest, which retains slightly raised fillips flanking the cartouche, the Stevenson-Phillips High Chest offered here and the Moulder High Chest, all with their embellished tympana and altered skirt, may represent the development of the form which was ultimately expressed with the skirt carving echoing the tympanum, as in the Potts and Van Pelt High Chests.
The Potts High Chest provided the prototype for the cartouche now on the high chest offered here. See also Antiques (January 1956), inside front cover, for an additional related chest-on-chest.
The forms of this group are characterised by a similarly arranged scrollboard applique with distinctive beading on the leaf-carving. Each of these high chests also shares an almost identically undulating, pierced and undercut shell surrounded by lush and intertwined foliage and tendrils at the lower drawer. The only case form of this group which bears a similar central shell-carved upper drawer is the Hollingsworth High Chest, and it is on the basis of this retention of the upper shell-drawer (versus losing that drawer so as to allow the applied scrollboard carving) as well as the development of the skirt that a possible chronology of these forms emerges. To this end, the Hollingsworth High Chest, with its upper shell-drawer, barren scrollboard and simple cyma and shell-carved skirt, may be the forerunner of this group of elaborate case forms. Following this, the ex-Garvan High Chest, which retains slightly raised fillips flanking the cartouche, the Stevenson-Phillips High Chest offered here and the Moulder High Chest, all with their embellished tympana and altered skirt, may represent the development of the form which was ultimately expressed with the skirt carving echoing the tympanum, as in the Potts and Van Pelt High Chests.
The Potts High Chest provided the prototype for the cartouche now on the high chest offered here. See also Antiques (January 1956), inside front cover, for an additional related chest-on-chest.