Property from the Collection of the Chipstone Foundation, sold to benefit the Acquisitions Fund

A QUEEN ANNE WALNUT SLANT-FRONT DESK

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, 1730-1750

Details

A QUEEN ANNE WALNUT SLANT-FRONT DESK
Boston, Massachusetts, 1730-1750
The rectangular top above a slant-lid with two inlaid mariner's compasses, opening to reveal a compartmented interior, over a conforming rectangular case fitted with four graduated long drawers each with line inlaid reserves, on bracket feet with shaped returns
39¼in. high, 35in. wide, 19½in. deep

Provenance

John Walton, Inc., Madison, Connecticut

Literature

Rodriquez Roque, American Furniture at Chipstone (Milwaukee, 1984), fig. 24, pp. 52-53.

Lot Essay

This early, inlaid desk is closely related to an important desk and bookcase in the Karolik Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (see Hipkiss, Eighteenth-Century American Arts: The M. and M. Karolik Collection (Boston, 1941), cat. no. 18). Both desks have slant-lids with nearly identical double mariner's compass inlay within line-inlaid frames, and corresponding rectangular line-inlaid drawer fronts. Furthermore, the profile of the shaped returns of the bracket feet is nearly identical in both desks. Another very similar desk, dated 1739, was made by William Parkman of Boston for the costly sum of fourteen pounds ten shillings (see Ellesin, ed., "Collector's Notes," Antiques (May 1975) pp. 952-953).

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