.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
A remarkable survival of early American furniture, the design, form and workmanship of this desk exhibit the highest level of furniture production in late 18th century Boston. A hallmark of Boston craftsmanship, the blockfront facade with its interplay of convex and concave contours embellished high style New England case pieces from the 1730s to the early 19th century. The principal mercantile city during this time, Boston was the center and stylistic disseminator of blockfront furniture production in Colonial America.
Details suggesting its Boston origin include the stylish corkscrew finials located on the document drawers, the juncture of the drawer divide and case covered by a veneer strip, the large dovetail joining the bottom molding with the chest's bottom boards, and the beading on the drawer sides and the sharp-kneed legs with raked talons.
THE BINNEY AND BLISS FAMILIES OF MASSACHUSETTS AND CANADA
The desk's drawers are lined with pages from the Halifax Daily Sun of 1855, a feature that supports the desk's family tradition that it was owned by Bishop Hibbert Binney (1819-1887) and Mary Bliss (1829-1903) who were married in Halifax in 1855. Both were descended from emigrants from Massachusetts in the mid-to-late eighteenth century: Jonathan Binney (1725-1767) and Jonathan Bliss (1742-1822). Jonathan Binney was born in Hull, Massachusetts and during the 1740s prospered as a merchant and shipowner in Boston. In 1753, he left for Halifax and may have commissioned this desk during a later visit to Boston (see Charles J. F. Binney, Genealogy of the Binney Family in the United States (Albany, NY, 1886), pp. 43-44). Jonathan Bliss, on the other hand, moved to New Brunswick in 1784 after a ten-year stay in England, a result of his Loyalism during the American Revolution. In St. John's and later Fredericton, Bliss served as lawyer to Benedict Arnold and became the province's first Chief Justice. For more on the Bliss family and a blockfront chest-on-chest owned by Jonathan Bliss, see Christie's New York, January 18, 1997, lot 203.
Details suggesting its Boston origin include the stylish corkscrew finials located on the document drawers, the juncture of the drawer divide and case covered by a veneer strip, the large dovetail joining the bottom molding with the chest's bottom boards, and the beading on the drawer sides and the sharp-kneed legs with raked talons.
THE BINNEY AND BLISS FAMILIES OF MASSACHUSETTS AND CANADA
The desk's drawers are lined with pages from the Halifax Daily Sun of 1855, a feature that supports the desk's family tradition that it was owned by Bishop Hibbert Binney (1819-1887) and Mary Bliss (1829-1903) who were married in Halifax in 1855. Both were descended from emigrants from Massachusetts in the mid-to-late eighteenth century: Jonathan Binney (1725-1767) and Jonathan Bliss (1742-1822). Jonathan Binney was born in Hull, Massachusetts and during the 1740s prospered as a merchant and shipowner in Boston. In 1753, he left for Halifax and may have commissioned this desk during a later visit to Boston (see Charles J. F. Binney, Genealogy of the Binney Family in the United States (Albany, NY, 1886), pp. 43-44). Jonathan Bliss, on the other hand, moved to New Brunswick in 1784 after a ten-year stay in England, a result of his Loyalism during the American Revolution. In St. John's and later Fredericton, Bliss served as lawyer to Benedict Arnold and became the province's first Chief Justice. For more on the Bliss family and a blockfront chest-on-chest owned by Jonathan Bliss, see Christie's New York, January 18, 1997, lot 203.