PROBABLY SALEM AREA, MASSACHUSETTS, 1790-1805

Virtually identical to two other examples at Winterthur Museum and the Peabody-Essex Museum, this fire screen illustrates an unusual form known to have been made in Salem, Massachusetts. These fire screens are distinguished by their half-octagon drop-leaf shelves, a feature noted by Charles F. Montgomery to be both decorative and functional. When lowered, the shape of the shelf provides a visual contrast to the oval screen and when raised, it provides a useful surface. As recorded by Salem cabinetmaker Jacob Sanderson in 1802, this form was described during the period as a "fire Screene with a flap" and more explicitly as a "Fire Screen with a leaf to sett Candlestick on" (Charles F. Montgomery, American Furniture: The Federal Period (New York, 1966), pp. 246-247, cat. 203; Helen Comstock, American Furniture: Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Century Styles (Exton, Pennsylvania, 1952), no. 545).