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Lot Essay
This magnificently preserved painted chamber table is a supreme monument of the late phase of the London-inspired joinery of Boston, Massachusetts. Unlike most Boston chamber tables, it has largely been over-painted or stripped. Several other chamber tables by the same shop tradition retain some passages of their painted decoration, including the small floral sprigs in the panels of the storage compartment and the squiggle painting on the frame. Among these are one with vasiform turnings that was illustrated in Wallace Nutting's Furniture Treasury, later acquired by the Brooklyn Museum, and another at the Rhode Island School of Design that retains the painted decoration on the case but has a restored base. See Wallace Nutting, Furniture Treasury (New York: Macmillan Publishing co., 1928), no. 216; Helen Comstock, American Furniture Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Century Styles (New York: The Viking Press, 1962), p. 43, fig. 58; Dean A. Fales, Jr., American Painted Furniture 1660-1880 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979), p. 554, fig. 72; Christopher Monkhouse and Thomas S. Michie, American Furniture In Pendleton House (Providence: Rhode Island School of Design, 1986), pp. 75-76, cat. no. 21.
These chamber tables straddle the transition between the late Mannerist and early Baroque styles. Curiously, while earlier examples like the present lot have ball turnings of the sort associated with Boston upholstered chairs of the Cromwellian type, later examples have vasiform turnings more like those of William and Mary oval leaf tables. A group of painted Boston tables and case pieces, including chests-of- drawers, chests with drawers, and square tables, also belong to this phase, wherein oak was supplanted by maple and pine with painted decoration. This group has not received adequate attention in the literature, although a chest-of-drawers and a square table at the Metropolitan Museum of Art have recently been analyzed by Frances Gruber Safford (the related chamber tables are cited in Monkhouse and Michie, p. 76, fn. 1 and David Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff, American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection (Houston, Texas, 1998), p. 15, cat. no. F27; for analysis of the late Boston painted examples in the Metropolitan Museum collection, see Frances Gruber Safford, American Furniture In The Metropolitan Museum Of Art I. Early Colonial Period The Seventeenth-Century and William and Mary Styles (New York, 2007), pp. 122-124, cat. no. 46, and pp. 269-272, cat. no. 110).
In a posthumously-published 1987 article, Benno M. Forman established the interpretive context for this furniture form. For years collectors and curators called them "chests-on-frame" or "boxes-on-frame," but it is evident that the cases are constructed in one piece, rather than assembled. Forman thought that the term "chamber table" which first appeared in probate inventories in the mid-1680s was the probable period term for this furniture form. Most likely, those using such a table for grooming stood in front of it, rather than sat. The later terms "toilet table" and "dressing table" probably refer to the early baroque tables made en suite with high chests of drawers after about 1705 (Benno M. Forman, "Furniture for Dressing in Early America, 1650-1730: Forms, Nomenclature, and Use," Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 22, nos. 2/3 (Summer/Autumn 1987), pp. 109-148).
This chamber table was collected by B.A. Behrend of Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts and then sold through Israel Sack to Charles Krum Davis (1889-1968). An active collector in the 1930s and 1940s who bought many objects from the Israel Sack firm, Davis resided in Fairfield, Connecticut and was president of the Remington Arms Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, from 1933-1953 and chairman of the board until his death. Davis was a colleague and friend of Henry Francis du Pont and du Pont evidently coveted numerous objects in the Davis collection, several of which were purchased for Winterthur after Davis's widow's death (Israel Sack, Inc., American Antiques From Israel Sack Collection, vol. V, pp. 1312-1355, and vol. VI, pp. 26 and 1592; "Antiques In Domestic Settings The Home of Mr. and Mrs. Charles K. Davis," The Magazine Antiques (January 1941), pp. 18-21, and "Antiques In Domestic Settings The Home of Mr. and Mrs. Charles K. Davis Part II," The Magazine Antiques (March 1941), pp. 126-128; and Wendy A. Cooper, "H. F. du Pont's fondness for furniture: A collecting odyssey," The Magazine Antiques (January 2002), pp. 158-163).
For a looking glass formerly in the Davis collection, see lot 41.
Robert F. Trent, July 2011
These chamber tables straddle the transition between the late Mannerist and early Baroque styles. Curiously, while earlier examples like the present lot have ball turnings of the sort associated with Boston upholstered chairs of the Cromwellian type, later examples have vasiform turnings more like those of William and Mary oval leaf tables. A group of painted Boston tables and case pieces, including chests-of- drawers, chests with drawers, and square tables, also belong to this phase, wherein oak was supplanted by maple and pine with painted decoration. This group has not received adequate attention in the literature, although a chest-of-drawers and a square table at the Metropolitan Museum of Art have recently been analyzed by Frances Gruber Safford (the related chamber tables are cited in Monkhouse and Michie, p. 76, fn. 1 and David Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff, American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection (Houston, Texas, 1998), p. 15, cat. no. F27; for analysis of the late Boston painted examples in the Metropolitan Museum collection, see Frances Gruber Safford, American Furniture In The Metropolitan Museum Of Art I. Early Colonial Period The Seventeenth-Century and William and Mary Styles (New York, 2007), pp. 122-124, cat. no. 46, and pp. 269-272, cat. no. 110).
In a posthumously-published 1987 article, Benno M. Forman established the interpretive context for this furniture form. For years collectors and curators called them "chests-on-frame" or "boxes-on-frame," but it is evident that the cases are constructed in one piece, rather than assembled. Forman thought that the term "chamber table" which first appeared in probate inventories in the mid-1680s was the probable period term for this furniture form. Most likely, those using such a table for grooming stood in front of it, rather than sat. The later terms "toilet table" and "dressing table" probably refer to the early baroque tables made en suite with high chests of drawers after about 1705 (Benno M. Forman, "Furniture for Dressing in Early America, 1650-1730: Forms, Nomenclature, and Use," Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 22, nos. 2/3 (Summer/Autumn 1987), pp. 109-148).
This chamber table was collected by B.A. Behrend of Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts and then sold through Israel Sack to Charles Krum Davis (1889-1968). An active collector in the 1930s and 1940s who bought many objects from the Israel Sack firm, Davis resided in Fairfield, Connecticut and was president of the Remington Arms Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, from 1933-1953 and chairman of the board until his death. Davis was a colleague and friend of Henry Francis du Pont and du Pont evidently coveted numerous objects in the Davis collection, several of which were purchased for Winterthur after Davis's widow's death (Israel Sack, Inc., American Antiques From Israel Sack Collection, vol. V, pp. 1312-1355, and vol. VI, pp. 26 and 1592; "Antiques In Domestic Settings The Home of Mr. and Mrs. Charles K. Davis," The Magazine Antiques (January 1941), pp. 18-21, and "Antiques In Domestic Settings The Home of Mr. and Mrs. Charles K. Davis Part II," The Magazine Antiques (March 1941), pp. 126-128; and Wendy A. Cooper, "H. F. du Pont's fondness for furniture: A collecting odyssey," The Magazine Antiques (January 2002), pp. 158-163).
For a looking glass formerly in the Davis collection, see lot 41.
Robert F. Trent, July 2011