Lot Essay
With its slender ring-turned standard and flat legs, this candlestand incorporates the crisp and often diminutive proportions associated with cabinetmaking in New Enlgand. Its inscription on the underside, "S. E. Hutchinson," suggests a possible history of ownership in Rhode Island, or even New York. A related stand with thin, flat legs, smaller dished top and a history of ownership in Newport family is in the Chipstone collection and adds viability to a Rhode Island area of manufacture (see Roque, American Furniture at Chipstone (Madison, 1984), pp. 336-337, fig. 158). Like the Chiptone stand, the physical characteristics of the stand shown here are sufficiently distinctive as to suggest a common specific design center. That both stands share a history of ownership that is or may be associated with Rhode Island points to that region as the source of these singular forms.