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拍品專文
With its scalloped top and curvilinear skirt, this dressing table is a masterful expression of the regional style of the Wethersfield, Connecticut area during the late eighteenth century. The table was featured in Thomas P. Kugelman, Alice K. Kugelman and Robert Lionetti’s acclaimed 2005 study and noted to relate closely to the “Wilcox Group,” a group probably made by a craftsman who trained in Wethersfield and later moved to nearby Middletown. Details such as side aprons with flattened arches, knee returns canted in the back, slender ankles and drawer sides with rounded tops are features seen on this group and on the dressing table offered here (Connecticut Valley Furniture: Eliphalet Chapin and His Contemporaries, 1750-1800 (Hanover, New Hampshire, 2005), pp. 121-125).
As recounted in Leigh Keno’s 1987 statement to Peter Goodman, Bill Samaha remembered that the dressing table was purchased for $400 by his father, George Samaha, in Berlin, Connecticut around 1941 from an elderly inhabitant known as “Old John,” who lived across the street from Angie (Angeline) Horton. Horton lived on Worthington Ridge Road and in 1930, so did eighty-year old John Hudson Webber (1850-1932). Webber died before the dressing table’s supposed purchase in 1941, but he stands as a very likely candidate for the owner of the table in early 20th century and it is possible that George Samaha acquired the table a decade earlier than thought. If the dressing table had descended in the family to Webber, it was most likely made by one of his or his wife’s great-grandparents, many of whom married in the area during the 1780s. Given the dressing table’s close affinity to Middletown’s “Wilcox Group,” an intriguing possibility is that the table was made for Sarah Wilcox (1760-1842) who married Abel North (1761-1839) in Middletown in 1788. Abel and Sarah (Wilcox) North were the great-grandparents of Mary Elizabeth Andrus/Andrews (1860-1927), the wife of John Hudson Webber and the probable individual later known as “Old John.” Sarah was the sister of Joseph Wilcox (1741-1832), owner of the high chest that has given this group the Wilcox name and coincidentally Joseph Wilcox’s high chest is being offered for sale in Christie’s, New York, Important Americana, 20-21 January 2022.
As recounted in Leigh Keno’s 1987 statement to Peter Goodman, Bill Samaha remembered that the dressing table was purchased for $400 by his father, George Samaha, in Berlin, Connecticut around 1941 from an elderly inhabitant known as “Old John,” who lived across the street from Angie (Angeline) Horton. Horton lived on Worthington Ridge Road and in 1930, so did eighty-year old John Hudson Webber (1850-1932). Webber died before the dressing table’s supposed purchase in 1941, but he stands as a very likely candidate for the owner of the table in early 20th century and it is possible that George Samaha acquired the table a decade earlier than thought. If the dressing table had descended in the family to Webber, it was most likely made by one of his or his wife’s great-grandparents, many of whom married in the area during the 1780s. Given the dressing table’s close affinity to Middletown’s “Wilcox Group,” an intriguing possibility is that the table was made for Sarah Wilcox (1760-1842) who married Abel North (1761-1839) in Middletown in 1788. Abel and Sarah (Wilcox) North were the great-grandparents of Mary Elizabeth Andrus/Andrews (1860-1927), the wife of John Hudson Webber and the probable individual later known as “Old John.” Sarah was the sister of Joseph Wilcox (1741-1832), owner of the high chest that has given this group the Wilcox name and coincidentally Joseph Wilcox’s high chest is being offered for sale in Christie’s, New York, Important Americana, 20-21 January 2022.