PROBABLY BERKS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA, DATED 1791

This chest is one of at least five that display red and black checkered decoration both in the borders surrounding the painted panels and in the flowerpots within the panels. The related chests are in the collections of the Reading Public Museum and Library, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Henry Ford Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (see Monroe H. Fabian, The Pennsylvania-German Decorated Chest (New York, 1978), figs. 146 and 232; John G. Shea, The Pennsylvania Dutch and Their Furniture (New York, 1980), p.66; and Beatrice B. Garvan, The Pennsylvania German Collection (Philadelphia, 1982), p.18). The latter two vary from the others by only employing the checkered design in the arch surmounting each panel, with the panel sides enclosed by free-standing baluster-shaped columns. Such columns frequently adorn chests made in Berks County and suggest a similar place of origin for the chest offered here.