POSSIBLY JOHN AITKEN (1770-1814), PHILADELPHIA, CIRCA 1795 

A close parallel to an example made for President George Washington by John Aitken (1770-1814), this tambour desk-and-bookcase may have been made by the same cabinetmaker or a competitor working in 1790s Philadelphia. Washington’s desk, now at Mount Vernon (acc. no. W-158), is documented by a 1797 bill of sale indicating that it cost $145 and of the same form and decorative embellishments, the desk offered here was probably equally expensive. Several related forms are known and while this desk differs in other ways from the Aitken desk, they are the only two in the group with tombstone shaping to the center of the cornice. They differ in the mullion design, the configuration of the interior drawers and the feet, with spade feet on the Aiken desk and plain tapered feet seen here, all of which could reflect different consumer options made by the same shop. However, the lower case of the desk offered here features drawers that extend beyond the inner edges of the front legs, a detail that contrasts with the Aitken desk and others in the group suggesting a different workshop. An exceptionally tall desk now at the National Gallery of Art features bookcase backboards consisting of four framed panels, a detail also seen on this lot. Other related desks include an example at Classical American Homes Preservation Trust’s Ayr Mount in Hillsborough, North Carolina, another at the National Gallery of Art and a third previously in the Reifsnyder Collection that sold, Doyle’s, New York, 5 April 2017, lot 258. For a discussion of these forms, see J. Michael Flanigan, American Furniture from the Kaufman Collection (New York, 1986), pp. 216-217, cat. 88.
When this desk was illustrated in 1937, it was the property of Hon. James Gustavus Whiteley (1866-1947) of Baltimore. He was the great-grandson of Col. William Rich Whiteley (1752-1815), who was noted to have been the desk’s first owner when it was advertised ten years later (see Literature above). The elder Whiteley was an active participant in the American Revolution. He served as Lieutenant Colonel of the 4th Maryland Battalion of the “Flying Camp,” an elite mobile unit conceived of by General Washington as a means of defending the vast area of colonial America, and as Commander-in-Chief of Maryland’s Caroline County Militia. After the War, he held various political and civic posts before retiring to his country estate on the Delaware/Maryland border. The desk presumably descended directly through the male line to his great-grandson before being sold by Joe Kindig, Jr., one of the most revered dealers of American furniture.