A PAINTED AND DECORATED BLANKET CHEST

YORK COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA, LATE 18TH/EARLY 19TH CENTURY

Details

A PAINTED AND DECORATED BLANKET CHEST
York County, Pennsylvania, late 18th/early 19th century
The rectangular top with molded edges centering two red and green painted pinwheel motifs on a grained mustard ground with painted quarter-fans at each corner and lunettes centering each long side, the whole with green painted rectangular surround opening to a conforming case fitted with a till, the exterior also centering red and green pinwheels, lunette-edges and quarter-fanned corners against a grained mustard ground, on a green-painted molded base on bracket feet
26¾in. high, 47in. wide, 20½in. deep

Provenance

Sold in these rooms, Pennsylvania German Folk Art and Decorative Arts from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Flanders Smith, 3 June 1995, lot 200

Lot Essay

A nearly identical blanket chest to the example illustrated here is in the Log Cabin of the Golden Plough Tavern, York, Pennsylvania. A related example dated 1793 and found in North Carolina with scalloped encircled pinwheels is illustrated in Fabian, p. 106, fig. 47. The North Carolina blanket chest has almost identical proportions and differs in structural decoration only in the exaggerated volute returns at its bracket feet. The date of the North Carolina example suggests an earlier point of manufacture for the blanket chest illustrated here. In addition, the presence of the North Carolina blanket chest attests to the ethnic and aesthetic relationship of Germans in Pennsylvania to those south through the Shenandoah Valley to North Carolina.

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