Lot Essay
Blocking, the interplay of convex and concave contours, was a decorative treatment first used in America by Boston craftsmen. The earliest example known is a desk-and-bookcase signed by the cabinetmakers, Job Coit and Job Coit, Jr., and dated 1738 (Nancy Goyne Evans, "The Genealogy of a Bookcase Desk," Winterthur Portfolio (Richmond VA, 1974), pp.213-222). Embellishing the fronts of desks, desk-and-bookcases, and chests-of-drawers, the blocked facade was used by New England cabinetmakers until the early nineteenth century and, along with the serpentine, reverse-serpentine, and bombe forms, remained a decorative option until the early nineteenth century.
With its run-through drawer dividers covered by a veneer, joining of the top, large dovetail joint between the base molding and chest's bottom, and beading on the drawer sides, this chest-of-drawers contains hallmarks of eighteenth-century Boston case construction. More unusual is the rounded, rather than flattened, outline of the blocking. Rather than suggesting an earlier date of manufacture, this variation of the more common blocked facade appears to have been a co-existing option (see Margaretta Markle Lovell, "Boston Blockfront Furniture," Boston Furniture of the Eighteenth Century (Boston, 1974), p. 98). Related chests are now in the collections of Yale University Art Gallery and Pendleton House (Gerald W.R. Ward, American Case Furniture (New Haven, CT, 1988), no. 62, pp. 141-142; Christopher Monkhouse and Thomas S. Michie, American Furniture in Pendleton House (Providence, RI, 1986), cat. 9, p. 62).
With its run-through drawer dividers covered by a veneer, joining of the top, large dovetail joint between the base molding and chest's bottom, and beading on the drawer sides, this chest-of-drawers contains hallmarks of eighteenth-century Boston case construction. More unusual is the rounded, rather than flattened, outline of the blocking. Rather than suggesting an earlier date of manufacture, this variation of the more common blocked facade appears to have been a co-existing option (see Margaretta Markle Lovell, "Boston Blockfront Furniture," Boston Furniture of the Eighteenth Century (Boston, 1974), p. 98). Related chests are now in the collections of Yale University Art Gallery and Pendleton House (Gerald W.R. Ward, American Case Furniture (New Haven, CT, 1988), no. 62, pp. 141-142; Christopher Monkhouse and Thomas S. Michie, American Furniture in Pendleton House (Providence, RI, 1986), cat. 9, p. 62).