Lot Essay
The present chest closely relates to three other examples attributed to Guilford, New Haven and similary dated, see Patricia Kane, Furniture of the New Haven Colony, the Seventeenth Century Style, New Haven Historical Society (New Haven, Connecticut, 1973), pp. 47-49, pls. XIX-XX, fig. 5. Each chest is decorated at its front with three inset panels. Their centers with leafy double-heart carvings and edged by similar moldings. For a further discussion on this topic, see Frances Gruber Safford, American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 2007), vol. I, pp. 213-214, no. 89.