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Lot Essay
In his The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book (London, 1793), Thomas Sheraton published a related design (fig. 1) and alluded to its diverse functions as follows: "[It] is intended for standing to write at, and there the height is adjusted for this purpose. The door on the right encloses a cupboard for a pot and slippers, and the left side contains a place for day book, ledger, and journal, for a gentlemen's own accounts."
Documented examples by Nehemiah Adams (1769-1840) and Edmund Johnson (active ca. 1793-1811), both of Salem, form the basis of a regional attribution for several secretaries that survive and lend the form the name "Salem Secretary," although scholarship suggests that it was made in other parts of Massachusetts and New England. All feature an undulating cornice broken by square finial plinths, four mullioned and glazed cupboard doors, an out-stepped central section flanked by cupboards and a butler's drawer with a writing section. The bold mahogany veneers and blocky trapezoidal feet distinguish this example from others, as well as the geometric "Gothic" styled mullions.
Other related secretaries include three bearing the label of Edmund Johnson; of these, one is at Winterthur (illustrated in Montgomery, pp. 222-223, cat. no. 179), a second is in the collection of the Henry Ford Museum, illustrated as the frontispiece to The Magazine Antiques (August, 1935); the third at one time in the collection of Mrs. Walter P. Wright, illustrated in Kimball, fig. 1. Additional similar secretaries include one in the collection of Bayou Bend with a history of ownership in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (see David Warren, et al., American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection (Houston, 1998), et al., pp. 111-113, cat. no. F179); a secretary in the collection of the Redwood Library in Newport, Rhode Island, which was owned by Captain Nicholas Easton and descended to Miss Ellen Townsend; one in a private Maryland collection and illustrated in Thomas H. Ormsbee, American Collector, August 1939, p. 6 (DAPC, 64.1524); one once owned by Saturday Evening Post editor George Horace Lorimer and now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, illustrated in an article by Fiske Kimball in Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin, April 1930, a third example at Winterthur, once owned by Israel Sack and illustrated in both Montgomery (pp. 225-226, cat. no. 182) and Albert Sack, The New Fine Points of Furniture, p. 179. A similar secretary formerly in the collection of the Ipswich Historical Society and now in the Mabel Brady Garvan collection at the Yale University Art Gallery exhibits arched mullions and eglomisé panels (Gerald Ward, American Case Furniture in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (New Haven, 1988), pp. 355-357, cat. no. 184).
The identity of the Samuel Hawkins March who signed his name in graphite across the top of the lower case is not presently known.
Documented examples by Nehemiah Adams (1769-1840) and Edmund Johnson (active ca. 1793-1811), both of Salem, form the basis of a regional attribution for several secretaries that survive and lend the form the name "Salem Secretary," although scholarship suggests that it was made in other parts of Massachusetts and New England. All feature an undulating cornice broken by square finial plinths, four mullioned and glazed cupboard doors, an out-stepped central section flanked by cupboards and a butler's drawer with a writing section. The bold mahogany veneers and blocky trapezoidal feet distinguish this example from others, as well as the geometric "Gothic" styled mullions.
Other related secretaries include three bearing the label of Edmund Johnson; of these, one is at Winterthur (illustrated in Montgomery, pp. 222-223, cat. no. 179), a second is in the collection of the Henry Ford Museum, illustrated as the frontispiece to The Magazine Antiques (August, 1935); the third at one time in the collection of Mrs. Walter P. Wright, illustrated in Kimball, fig. 1. Additional similar secretaries include one in the collection of Bayou Bend with a history of ownership in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (see David Warren, et al., American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection (Houston, 1998), et al., pp. 111-113, cat. no. F179); a secretary in the collection of the Redwood Library in Newport, Rhode Island, which was owned by Captain Nicholas Easton and descended to Miss Ellen Townsend; one in a private Maryland collection and illustrated in Thomas H. Ormsbee, American Collector, August 1939, p. 6 (DAPC, 64.1524); one once owned by Saturday Evening Post editor George Horace Lorimer and now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, illustrated in an article by Fiske Kimball in Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin, April 1930, a third example at Winterthur, once owned by Israel Sack and illustrated in both Montgomery (pp. 225-226, cat. no. 182) and Albert Sack, The New Fine Points of Furniture, p. 179. A similar secretary formerly in the collection of the Ipswich Historical Society and now in the Mabel Brady Garvan collection at the Yale University Art Gallery exhibits arched mullions and eglomisé panels (Gerald Ward, American Case Furniture in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (New Haven, 1988), pp. 355-357, cat. no. 184).
The identity of the Samuel Hawkins March who signed his name in graphite across the top of the lower case is not presently known.