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Lot Essay
With its intricately rendered guilloche-and-rosette façade, this box is among the more elaborate survivals of seventeenth-century carved ornament from Massachusetts' Essex County. A closely related three-part guilloche with rosettes appears on a Great Chair at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (acc. no. 37.316) dated from circa 1640 to 1685. Although the detailing varies from that on the box offered here, the overall layout of both designs is similar and both feature surrounding leafy abstractions composed of opposing gouge cuts. As noted by Gerald W. R. Ward, the ornament on the chair and five other related examples is based on East Anglian prototypes and the MFA chair, as well as two others in the group, were found in Essex County. Similar carved ornament is seen on furniture attributed to Devon-trained joiner William Searle (d. 1667) and his successor Thomas Dennis (1638-1706), who worked in Ipswich in the late seventeenth century. It is likely that the maker of the box offered here was familiar with their work. In addition to the guilloche, rosette and opposing-gouge designs, some survivals of the Searle-Dennis tradition display detailing remarkably close to that on this box. For example, the guilloche borders on this box are intermittently punctuated by a motif created by two small gouge cuts enclosing an incised dot, appearing like "(.)"; the same motif is repeated along the arched surrounds on the central panel of a 1676 chest at Winterthur Museum and on those above flower heads on a chest at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a Great Chair at the Peabody Essex Museum, all attributed to the Searle-Dennis tradition. Like the MMA chest, this box incorporates maple, a feature that Frances Gruber Safford notes indicates production toward the end of the century (Winterthur Museum, 1982.276; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 10.125.123, Frances Gruber Safford, American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 2007), pp. 202-204, cat. 85; the gravestone of Grace (Cole) Searle Dennis (d. 1686), William Searle's widow and later Thomas Dennis' wife, also bears guilloche-and-rosette designs, see Robert Tarule, The Artisan of Ipswich: Craftsmanship and Community in Colonial New England (Baltimore, 2004), p. 129).
Related rosettes, each with an inner and outer ring of petals as seen on the box offered here, adorn a chest dated 1679 also thought to be from Essex County, which was recently acquired by Winterthur Museum, and a Great Chair in the collections of the Chipstone Foundation (Sold, Pook & Pook, Downingtown, Pennsylvania, 25-26 April 2014, lot 618; the Chipstone Foundation, acc. no. 1997.3). For guilloche-carved furniture with variant rosette designs, see three boxes attributed to the Buell shop tradition of Windsor and Killingworth, Connecticut (Joshua W. Lane and Donald P. White III, The Woodworkers of Windsor (Deerfield, 2003), p. 51, cat. 20).
Christie's would like to thank Robert F. Trent for his assistance with this essay.
Related rosettes, each with an inner and outer ring of petals as seen on the box offered here, adorn a chest dated 1679 also thought to be from Essex County, which was recently acquired by Winterthur Museum, and a Great Chair in the collections of the Chipstone Foundation (Sold, Pook & Pook, Downingtown, Pennsylvania, 25-26 April 2014, lot 618; the Chipstone Foundation, acc. no. 1997.3). For guilloche-carved furniture with variant rosette designs, see three boxes attributed to the Buell shop tradition of Windsor and Killingworth, Connecticut (Joshua W. Lane and Donald P. White III, The Woodworkers of Windsor (Deerfield, 2003), p. 51, cat. 20).
Christie's would like to thank Robert F. Trent for his assistance with this essay.