Lot Essay
With rounded blocking and finely carved hairy-paw feet, this blockfront chest-of-drawers exemplifies the sophistication of Boston's late eighteenth century cabinetmakers. Blocking had been part of the Boston cabinetmaker's repetoire since the late 1730s. The earliest blockfront caseforms featured flattened or squared convex profiles. This example, with rounded convex profiles, illustrates a development of the form introduced in the 1760s.
While blockfront furniture was made in relatively high numbers, the hairy-paw feet on the chest offered here were costly alternatives to bird ball-and-claw or bracket feet and illustrate the degree to which Boston's cabinetmakers and their clientele were keenly aware of English fashions. Through design books, immigrant craftsman and imported objects, colonial society emulated the latest London styles. The maker of this chest could have been inspired by the design illustrated here or by London-made furniture in Boston. English-made furniture with hairy-paw carved feet known to have been owned in Boston in the 1740s and 1750s include seating furniture ordered by Thomas Hancock and William Phillips (Nancy Richards and Nancy Goyne Evans, New England Furniture at Winterthur: Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods (Winterthur, 1997), p.252).
With a top sliding over dovetailed sides and a "giant" dovetail joining its bottom boards and base molding, this chest exhibits hallmarks of Boston furniture production. More unusual is the double-lobed central drop. Related drops adorn at least two other chests in the collections of Winterthur Museum and the Concord Museum illustrated in Richards and Evans, p.358 and David F. Wood, The Concord Museum: Decorative Arts from a New England Collection (Concord, Massachusetts, 1996), cat.7B, pp.14-16. A slant-front desk in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston exhibits a related drop with three lobes and bears almost identical knee returns and carved feet (Margaretta Markle Lovell, "Boston Blockfront Furniture," Boston Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, Brock Jobe, ed. (Boston, 1972), fig.81).
While blockfront furniture was made in relatively high numbers, the hairy-paw feet on the chest offered here were costly alternatives to bird ball-and-claw or bracket feet and illustrate the degree to which Boston's cabinetmakers and their clientele were keenly aware of English fashions. Through design books, immigrant craftsman and imported objects, colonial society emulated the latest London styles. The maker of this chest could have been inspired by the design illustrated here or by London-made furniture in Boston. English-made furniture with hairy-paw carved feet known to have been owned in Boston in the 1740s and 1750s include seating furniture ordered by Thomas Hancock and William Phillips (Nancy Richards and Nancy Goyne Evans, New England Furniture at Winterthur: Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods (Winterthur, 1997), p.252).
With a top sliding over dovetailed sides and a "giant" dovetail joining its bottom boards and base molding, this chest exhibits hallmarks of Boston furniture production. More unusual is the double-lobed central drop. Related drops adorn at least two other chests in the collections of Winterthur Museum and the Concord Museum illustrated in Richards and Evans, p.358 and David F. Wood, The Concord Museum: Decorative Arts from a New England Collection (Concord, Massachusetts, 1996), cat.7B, pp.14-16. A slant-front desk in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston exhibits a related drop with three lobes and bears almost identical knee returns and carved feet (Margaretta Markle Lovell, "Boston Blockfront Furniture," Boston Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, Brock Jobe, ed. (Boston, 1972), fig.81).