Lot Essay
Made for Sarah Corlis to celebrate her marriage to Dr. William Corlis Bowen in 1769, the Corlis-Bowen Family Desk-and-Bookcase is both a rare example and survivor of the material world of a well-to-do women in 18th century Providence, as well as a highly inportant addition to the ongoing catalogue of Rhode Island blocked and shell-carved case forms.
In an era in which ownership of property was highly unusual for women and in which the material testament of a woman's education was more commonly represented by a finely wrought needlework, the existence of this monumental form is a remarkable exception to that rule. Sarah Corlis' marriage to William Bowen represented the union of two of that state's most prominent families. Passed from its original owner, Sarah Corlis Bowen, to her eldest daughter, Elizabeth Bowen Armory, and succesively bequeathed along the female line of descent from the Corlis-Bowen union, the history of ownership of this desk and bookcase shows a tradition upheld by the family as well.
Fully in the tradition of quintessential coastal Rhode Island and shell-carved forms, the conjectural manufacture date of 1769 is probable given the documented chronology of several of the most important examples of the blocked, shell-carved desk and bookcase form. To this end, the establishment and permeation of the blocked and shell-carved motif as a popular indigienous aesthetic of Rhode Island's most important ports occured early in the 1760s. Furniture made for Nicholas Brown's wife at about the time of their marriage in 1762 represents one of the first documented instances of Goddard's "swelled" furniture from Newport arriving in Providence; this was followed in 1763 by Moses Brown's letter to Goddard requesting furntiure "after my Brothers Wifes." (Moses, p.196). In 1763, Providence merchant Jabez Bowen, Dr. William Bowen's half-brother, also received from Goddard a tea table and chest-on-chest with "swelled" fronts. Accordingly, the choice of blocked and shell-carved case form for her wedding furniture represented not only the pinnacle of fashion for the new Mrs. Bowen, but may also have been intended as a form of compliment to the Bowens and testament to Sarah Corlis' new identity as a Bowen.
Although probate records for Sarah and William Bowen are inconclusive regarding the desk and bookcase, they nonetheless reveal enormous detail about the Bowen household. Where Sarah Corlis Bowen died in 1825 leaving no will or inventory to record of her possessions, contemporary probate law would have automatically reverted her property to her husband's legal possession. Accordingly, with William Bowen's death in 1832, his will and probate inventory provide shed ample light on the family (Providence, Rhode Island, Probate Records, Will No.13, pp.577-580, Reference A5400). Bowen's estate appraisers included, among others, Horation G. Bowen, the son of his half-brother Jabez Bowen, and Samuel Carlile, brother of John Carlile Jr., cabinetmaker of Providence. Beyond Bowen's cash bequests exceeding $12,000, his estate records also show bond investments valued at $24,000, as well as tangible personalty appraised at $12,307.80. Where Bowen's estate at the time of his death easily placed him among the wealthiest men of Providence, the full inventory of his household's contents shows very little furnishings of a commensurate value. This inconsistency maybe explained by the removal of furniture from Bowen's estate by his daughters.
Bowen's last will and testament evenly divides his non-tangible assets between his daughters Elizabeth Bowen Armory (illustrated above), Sarah Bowen Skinner, Harriet Bowen Morris and Maria Bowen Whipple. A subsequent court document submitted by John Whipple and Charles Morris, Bowen's sons-in-law and executors, prrivides a quantitative account of the degree to which Bowen was even-handed in his bequests: each daughter received the equivalent of $3,068.15½ in tangible property and outright cash gifts from the estate (Folio 5, Book 8). This sum was itemized according to the date and nature of the bequest, and shows a debit for each daughter accrued five weeks after Bowen's death, "To furniture taken at valuation." Elizabeth Bowen Amory account is the first listed and shows her removal $184.45 in furniture from her father's estate. No other daughter received furniture valued this highly, though each remaining daughter received cash to compensate the difference.
In terms of tangible property, Bowen's last will and testament also contained specific bequests fo particular property to individual legatees. To Harriet Morris, he left "the Dining set of China I bought from Captain James Munro..."; to Sarah Skinner, he left his pianoforte. Bowen bequesthed to his grandson, William C. Bowen, a gold watch that had belonged to the younger Bowen's father; he also removed from any financial obligation to his estate those of his patients who could not pay their outstanding debts (Whipple listed for the court those patients and the nature of their circumstances). To Elizabeth Bowen Armory, however, Bowen appears to have left no property. Given Bowen's wealth, the nature of his non-tangible bequests to his daughters, the appraised value of the Elizabeth Armory's furniture taken from her father's estate, as well as Bowen's treatment of his debtors, the omission of Elizabeth from any tangible bequests was probably not an act of exclusion. More likely, this was a recognition of what Bowen knew his eldest daughter was due to receive, or had already received, from her late mother's possessions, and is probably part of the $181.45 that she removed at the estate evaluation on February 27, 1832. This hypothesis seems more plausible given that where Bowen's probate inventory is otherwise exhaustive, the specific items he mentioned in his will, such as the pianoforte and gold watch, do not appear on the inventory either.
As an example of Rhode Island blocked and shell-carved case furniture, the Corlis-Bowen Desk and Bookcase sheds important light on the complexities of the 18th century Rhode Island cabinetmaking. While Rhode Island blocked and shell-carved case forms are traditionally associated with the cabinetmaking Goddard and Townsend families, forms such as the Corlis-Bowen desk and bookcase may suggest an alternative, as yet unidentified, cabinetmaking shop also producing remarkable examples of this aesthetic.
Differing in several structural and decorative details from documented Goddard-Townsend forms, the Corlis-Bowen Desk and Bookcase employs features associated with cabinetmaking traditions in both Newport and Providence. The decorative and structural features associated with a Providence area of manufacture on the Corlis-Bowen Besk and Bookcase are twofold. These include the shell-carved bookcase doors both sculpted from a single stock of wood and slightly hollowed behind the path of the shell's arc. Similarly conceived doors appear on several tall case clocks. The first and most closely related clock formerly owned by Jabez Bowen with fielded panel door whose central shell motif is hollowed from behind according to the arc of the shell (see Antiques, May 1984, p.989 advertisement). Another related tall case clock inscribed "Spaulding, Providence" is illustrated and discussed in Ott et al, The John Brown House: Loan Exhibition of Rhode Island Furniture (Providence, 1965) p. 122, fig. 77; and a third is illustrated in American Antiwues from Israel Sack Collection, Brochure 32, p.1615, fig. P4706. In addition, the drawers are constructed by nailing the bottoms into the rabbetted underside of the drawer front and applying an additional strip to each drawer side that is partially dovetailed to the drawer front and that serves to fill out the bottoms of the drawer sides. Decorative elements of the Corlis-Bowen Desk and Bookcase associated with a Newport area of manufacture include the flat, applied shells of the slant lid, and its more diminutive overall scale as defined by its smaller bookcase. The proportion and simple arched doors of this section place the Corlis-Bowen Desk and Bookcase in the aesthetic tradition of an early labeled desk and bookcase by Job Townsend illustrated in Carpenter, The Arts and Crafts of Newport, R.I. (Newport, 1954), p.71, fig. 44. These similarities to forms associated with both significant ports may suggest important implications regarding both travel and work practices of journeymen carvers and joiners in mid-18th century coastal Rhode Island, as well as challenge current notions of the size of cabinetmaking shops in this area.
Despite that the Corlis-Bowen Family Desk and Bookcase may be the only blocked five-shell form presently known, four other blocked and carved shell-carved case forms with similar features to those seen here show that his example is not aberrations and that as a group, the five objects can be isolated as distinct from the work of other documented shops. The four other forms of this group include to date: the Joseph Brown Nine-Shell desk and bookcase presently on exhibit and in the collection of the Rhode Island Historical Society (illustrated here at xxx), the Gladding Nine-Shell chest-on-chest presently on exhibit and in the collection of Winterthur (illustrated here at xxx), a Four-Shell chest-on-chest believed to have belonged to John Brown and now in the Kaufman Collection, illustrated and discussed in Flanigan, American Furniture from the Kaufman Collection (New York, 1986), pp.76-79, fig.26, as well as a blocked and shell-carved desk and bookcase in the collection ot he New London County Historical Society. The features shared by this five include darker framing elements on the interior stiles of the doors; in the case of the Kaufman chest-on-chest, this is seen the tympanum and in some lower section drawer divides; whether this coincidence was a deliberate aesthetic maneuver to enhance the play of light and dark with receding and advancing shells, or whether more simply the two forms were produced by the same shop at approximately the same time and therefore shared similar mahogany stock can only be conjectured. Other shared features also include tight ogee bracket feet whose volute-carved embellishments terminate in a clearly articulated form; and, of those objects with carved rosettes at the bonnet top, the John Brown desk and bookcase, the Gladding chest-on-chest and Corlis-Bowen desk and bookcase all share the same compact arrangement of petals around a protruding button. Interestingly, these features do not appear on the Nicholas Brown desk and bookcase, suggesting, among other conclusions, that the Brown brothers may have patronized more than one cabinetmaking shop.
Although the author of these forms has been variously suggested, no individual as yet stands out as the probable cabinetmaker of this group. Aesthetically informed by the designs and popularity of the swelled forms of the Goddards and the Townsends, structural differences suggest this is not the originating shop of the Corlis-Bowen Family desk and bookcase. Yet the existence of four other clearly related case forms, most closely the Joseph Brown desk and bookcase, suggest the existence of another cabinetmaking shop capable of successfully competing with the Goddards and Townsends, even among their most loyal patrons.
References
Carpenter, Ralph E., Jr. "A Comparative Study of the Work of John Carlile, Jr., of Providence and the Townsends and the Goddards of Newport," The Walpole Society Note Book (1991-1992), pp.79-86.
Cooper, Wendy, In Praise of America: American Decorative Arts, 1650-1830 (New York, 1980), pp.28-29
Rowe, L. Earle, "John Carlile, Cabinetmaker" Antiques, December 1924, pp.310-311
Moses, Michael, Master Craftsmen of Newport: The Townsends and Goddards (Tenafly, 1984), pp.301-345
Last Will and Testament, Probate Inventory and Related Court Documents PErtaining to the Estate of William Bowen, Providence, Rhode Island, 1832-1847, Will 13, pp.577-580, Probate Reference A5400.
In an era in which ownership of property was highly unusual for women and in which the material testament of a woman's education was more commonly represented by a finely wrought needlework, the existence of this monumental form is a remarkable exception to that rule. Sarah Corlis' marriage to William Bowen represented the union of two of that state's most prominent families. Passed from its original owner, Sarah Corlis Bowen, to her eldest daughter, Elizabeth Bowen Armory, and succesively bequeathed along the female line of descent from the Corlis-Bowen union, the history of ownership of this desk and bookcase shows a tradition upheld by the family as well.
Fully in the tradition of quintessential coastal Rhode Island and shell-carved forms, the conjectural manufacture date of 1769 is probable given the documented chronology of several of the most important examples of the blocked, shell-carved desk and bookcase form. To this end, the establishment and permeation of the blocked and shell-carved motif as a popular indigienous aesthetic of Rhode Island's most important ports occured early in the 1760s. Furniture made for Nicholas Brown's wife at about the time of their marriage in 1762 represents one of the first documented instances of Goddard's "swelled" furniture from Newport arriving in Providence; this was followed in 1763 by Moses Brown's letter to Goddard requesting furntiure "after my Brothers Wifes." (Moses, p.196). In 1763, Providence merchant Jabez Bowen, Dr. William Bowen's half-brother, also received from Goddard a tea table and chest-on-chest with "swelled" fronts. Accordingly, the choice of blocked and shell-carved case form for her wedding furniture represented not only the pinnacle of fashion for the new Mrs. Bowen, but may also have been intended as a form of compliment to the Bowens and testament to Sarah Corlis' new identity as a Bowen.
Although probate records for Sarah and William Bowen are inconclusive regarding the desk and bookcase, they nonetheless reveal enormous detail about the Bowen household. Where Sarah Corlis Bowen died in 1825 leaving no will or inventory to record of her possessions, contemporary probate law would have automatically reverted her property to her husband's legal possession. Accordingly, with William Bowen's death in 1832, his will and probate inventory provide shed ample light on the family (Providence, Rhode Island, Probate Records, Will No.13, pp.577-580, Reference A5400). Bowen's estate appraisers included, among others, Horation G. Bowen, the son of his half-brother Jabez Bowen, and Samuel Carlile, brother of John Carlile Jr., cabinetmaker of Providence. Beyond Bowen's cash bequests exceeding $12,000, his estate records also show bond investments valued at $24,000, as well as tangible personalty appraised at $12,307.80. Where Bowen's estate at the time of his death easily placed him among the wealthiest men of Providence, the full inventory of his household's contents shows very little furnishings of a commensurate value. This inconsistency maybe explained by the removal of furniture from Bowen's estate by his daughters.
Bowen's last will and testament evenly divides his non-tangible assets between his daughters Elizabeth Bowen Armory (illustrated above), Sarah Bowen Skinner, Harriet Bowen Morris and Maria Bowen Whipple. A subsequent court document submitted by John Whipple and Charles Morris, Bowen's sons-in-law and executors, prrivides a quantitative account of the degree to which Bowen was even-handed in his bequests: each daughter received the equivalent of $3,068.15½ in tangible property and outright cash gifts from the estate (Folio 5, Book 8). This sum was itemized according to the date and nature of the bequest, and shows a debit for each daughter accrued five weeks after Bowen's death, "To furniture taken at valuation." Elizabeth Bowen Amory account is the first listed and shows her removal $184.45 in furniture from her father's estate. No other daughter received furniture valued this highly, though each remaining daughter received cash to compensate the difference.
In terms of tangible property, Bowen's last will and testament also contained specific bequests fo particular property to individual legatees. To Harriet Morris, he left "the Dining set of China I bought from Captain James Munro..."; to Sarah Skinner, he left his pianoforte. Bowen bequesthed to his grandson, William C. Bowen, a gold watch that had belonged to the younger Bowen's father; he also removed from any financial obligation to his estate those of his patients who could not pay their outstanding debts (Whipple listed for the court those patients and the nature of their circumstances). To Elizabeth Bowen Armory, however, Bowen appears to have left no property. Given Bowen's wealth, the nature of his non-tangible bequests to his daughters, the appraised value of the Elizabeth Armory's furniture taken from her father's estate, as well as Bowen's treatment of his debtors, the omission of Elizabeth from any tangible bequests was probably not an act of exclusion. More likely, this was a recognition of what Bowen knew his eldest daughter was due to receive, or had already received, from her late mother's possessions, and is probably part of the $181.45 that she removed at the estate evaluation on February 27, 1832. This hypothesis seems more plausible given that where Bowen's probate inventory is otherwise exhaustive, the specific items he mentioned in his will, such as the pianoforte and gold watch, do not appear on the inventory either.
As an example of Rhode Island blocked and shell-carved case furniture, the Corlis-Bowen Desk and Bookcase sheds important light on the complexities of the 18th century Rhode Island cabinetmaking. While Rhode Island blocked and shell-carved case forms are traditionally associated with the cabinetmaking Goddard and Townsend families, forms such as the Corlis-Bowen desk and bookcase may suggest an alternative, as yet unidentified, cabinetmaking shop also producing remarkable examples of this aesthetic.
Differing in several structural and decorative details from documented Goddard-Townsend forms, the Corlis-Bowen Desk and Bookcase employs features associated with cabinetmaking traditions in both Newport and Providence. The decorative and structural features associated with a Providence area of manufacture on the Corlis-Bowen Besk and Bookcase are twofold. These include the shell-carved bookcase doors both sculpted from a single stock of wood and slightly hollowed behind the path of the shell's arc. Similarly conceived doors appear on several tall case clocks. The first and most closely related clock formerly owned by Jabez Bowen with fielded panel door whose central shell motif is hollowed from behind according to the arc of the shell (see Antiques, May 1984, p.989 advertisement). Another related tall case clock inscribed "Spaulding, Providence" is illustrated and discussed in Ott et al, The John Brown House: Loan Exhibition of Rhode Island Furniture (Providence, 1965) p. 122, fig. 77; and a third is illustrated in American Antiwues from Israel Sack Collection, Brochure 32, p.1615, fig. P4706. In addition, the drawers are constructed by nailing the bottoms into the rabbetted underside of the drawer front and applying an additional strip to each drawer side that is partially dovetailed to the drawer front and that serves to fill out the bottoms of the drawer sides. Decorative elements of the Corlis-Bowen Desk and Bookcase associated with a Newport area of manufacture include the flat, applied shells of the slant lid, and its more diminutive overall scale as defined by its smaller bookcase. The proportion and simple arched doors of this section place the Corlis-Bowen Desk and Bookcase in the aesthetic tradition of an early labeled desk and bookcase by Job Townsend illustrated in Carpenter, The Arts and Crafts of Newport, R.I. (Newport, 1954), p.71, fig. 44. These similarities to forms associated with both significant ports may suggest important implications regarding both travel and work practices of journeymen carvers and joiners in mid-18th century coastal Rhode Island, as well as challenge current notions of the size of cabinetmaking shops in this area.
Despite that the Corlis-Bowen Family Desk and Bookcase may be the only blocked five-shell form presently known, four other blocked and carved shell-carved case forms with similar features to those seen here show that his example is not aberrations and that as a group, the five objects can be isolated as distinct from the work of other documented shops. The four other forms of this group include to date: the Joseph Brown Nine-Shell desk and bookcase presently on exhibit and in the collection of the Rhode Island Historical Society (illustrated here at xxx), the Gladding Nine-Shell chest-on-chest presently on exhibit and in the collection of Winterthur (illustrated here at xxx), a Four-Shell chest-on-chest believed to have belonged to John Brown and now in the Kaufman Collection, illustrated and discussed in Flanigan, American Furniture from the Kaufman Collection (New York, 1986), pp.76-79, fig.26, as well as a blocked and shell-carved desk and bookcase in the collection ot he New London County Historical Society. The features shared by this five include darker framing elements on the interior stiles of the doors; in the case of the Kaufman chest-on-chest, this is seen the tympanum and in some lower section drawer divides; whether this coincidence was a deliberate aesthetic maneuver to enhance the play of light and dark with receding and advancing shells, or whether more simply the two forms were produced by the same shop at approximately the same time and therefore shared similar mahogany stock can only be conjectured. Other shared features also include tight ogee bracket feet whose volute-carved embellishments terminate in a clearly articulated form; and, of those objects with carved rosettes at the bonnet top, the John Brown desk and bookcase, the Gladding chest-on-chest and Corlis-Bowen desk and bookcase all share the same compact arrangement of petals around a protruding button. Interestingly, these features do not appear on the Nicholas Brown desk and bookcase, suggesting, among other conclusions, that the Brown brothers may have patronized more than one cabinetmaking shop.
Although the author of these forms has been variously suggested, no individual as yet stands out as the probable cabinetmaker of this group. Aesthetically informed by the designs and popularity of the swelled forms of the Goddards and the Townsends, structural differences suggest this is not the originating shop of the Corlis-Bowen Family desk and bookcase. Yet the existence of four other clearly related case forms, most closely the Joseph Brown desk and bookcase, suggest the existence of another cabinetmaking shop capable of successfully competing with the Goddards and Townsends, even among their most loyal patrons.
References
Carpenter, Ralph E., Jr. "A Comparative Study of the Work of John Carlile, Jr., of Providence and the Townsends and the Goddards of Newport," The Walpole Society Note Book (1991-1992), pp.79-86.
Cooper, Wendy, In Praise of America: American Decorative Arts, 1650-1830 (New York, 1980), pp.28-29
Rowe, L. Earle, "John Carlile, Cabinetmaker" Antiques, December 1924, pp.310-311
Moses, Michael, Master Craftsmen of Newport: The Townsends and Goddards (Tenafly, 1984), pp.301-345
Last Will and Testament, Probate Inventory and Related Court Documents PErtaining to the Estate of William Bowen, Providence, Rhode Island, 1832-1847, Will 13, pp.577-580, Probate Reference A5400.