Lot Essay
Microanalysis reveals that this box's wood is cedrela, also known as Spanish cedar, a wood related to mahogany and native to Central America and the Caribbean. Imported into Boston in the late seventeenth century, cedrela was incorporated selectively into high-style furniture of the era. In the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Yale University Art Gallery, two chests of drawers with doors feature this wood and are illustrated in Robert F. Trent, catalogue entry, in Jonathan L. Fairbanks and Robert F. Trent, New England Begins, vol. 3 (Boston, 1982), p. 537 and Gerald W. R. Ward, American Case Furniture in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (New Haven, 1988), cat. 51, pp.125-128.