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拍品專文
Embellished with highly inventive carved ornament, this high chest was almost certainly made en suite with a dressing table now in the collections of Bayou Bend at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Both forms exhibit oversize shells in the skirts, the same skirt profile, fluted quarter columns and knee carving of the same design. These case pieces appear to have been made in the same shop as a high chest now at the Baltimore Museum of Art, which features an upper shell drawer virtually identical to that on the piece offered here, as well as a similarly executed base. In addition to their similarities in design, all three pieces display ball-and-claw feet with noticeable notches at the top of each rear talon. Such idiosyncratic rendering highly suggests the hand of the same individual. Found near Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the related high chest is attributed to Annapolis. However, the overall model is clearly derived from Philadelphia sources and the shop that made these pieces may have been based in either locale (David B. Warren et al., American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection (Houston, 1998), pp. 79-80, cat. F130; William Voss Elder III and Jayne E. Stokes, American Furniture 1680-1880 from the Collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, 1987), pp. 74-76, cat. 50).