GILBERT T. VINCENT

The Bombé Furniture of Boston

THE American bombé casepiece is among the most outstanding furniture forms produced by American eighteenth-century craftsmen. Bombé furniture is rare, well designed, and skillfully constructed. More importantly for the historian, its production was almost exclusively confined to the city of Boston and its immediate environs.144 A study of this type of furniture will add to our understanding of the period leading up to the American Revolution and the Federalist era in Boston and its cultural dependencies from Salem in the north to Plymouth in the south.

Appearing on chests of drawers, chest-on-chests, desks, desks and bookcases, dressing tables, dressing glasses, and tea caddies, the form as produced in Boston is defined by a single bulge located near the base of the front and sides of a piece of furniture. Bombé furniture partakes of essentially the same refined spirit that produced turret-top tea tables (fig. 94), blockfront furniture, reverse serpentine case-pieces (fig. 95), and furniture with a hollowed pediment composed of double ogee curves (fig. 96). These individual forms as well as American bombé design are either unique to or achieve their greatest popularity in Boston and its cultural dependents. When all the designs are considered as a group, they illustrate an aesthetic directly inspired by Great Britain. There was apparently little cross-exchange of design with the other colonial furniture-making centers of New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston; Boston furniture of this type relates almost directly with specific British prototypes.

Bostonians’ taste combined a Puritan and provincial background with a definite aspiration toward the cosmopolitan nature of the baroque age as interpreted in England. The tight, crisp verticality, attenuated proportions, and surface decoration of most Boston furniture express the Puritan and provincial aspects of Boston design, whereas the curvilinear character of Boston bombé, blockfront, and serpentine furniture strives for a sense of baroque form and movement in space.

period of popularity

The appearance of the bombé form in Boston poses a number of complex, unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable questions. What is the origin of the form that became so popular in Boston? How did the design arrive in Boston? Why does the form appear only in Massachusetts, an area resistant to the Counter-Reformation and its development of the baroque aesthetic?

94. Tea Table. Boston area, c. 1750–1770. Mahogany and white pine; h. 27¾ inches, w. 32⅜ inches, d. 23⅜ inches. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, M. and M. Karolik Collection, 41.592.)

95. Chest-on-Chest. Made by Nathan Bo wen and Ebenezer Martin, Marblehead, 1780. Mahogany and white pine; h. 86 inches, w. 42 inches, d. 24½ inches. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of Miss Josie E. Prescott and Miss Mary E. Prescott, 33.373.)

A thorough study of Boston bombé furniture is handicapped by an absence of firm identification. Few of the more than fifty extant examples are signed, dated, or recorded in family histories. Only four bombé casepieces are known to be labelled by cabinetmakers. However, a number of generalizations can be drawn from the small amount of documentary information available. Major Benjamin Frothingham (1734–1809) signed a bombé desk and bookcase in four places in 1753 (fig. 97), the earliest dated American example. Although the signatures are probably that of Major Benjamin rather than that of his father (also named Benjamin), Frothingham would have been nineteen years old in 1753. There is a second signature, an unidentified “D Sprage.” Whether both Major Benjamin and Sprage were working in the elder Frothingham’s shop and this desk was a chef d’oeuvre made to demonstrate their competence, or whether this is one of the first products of a short-lived and previously unrecorded partnership is not known at this time. We only know that Frothingham was connected with the construction of this important and handsome desk in 1753. The latest dated example is a chest-on-chest made by John Cogswell for the Derby family in 1782 (fig. 125). That the Derbys, Salem’s most fashion-conscious newly rich, chose to order a bombé chest from Boston shows the dominance of Boston cabinetwork in Massachusetts, and also the continuing appeal of the bombé form after the Revolution and perhaps as late as the turn of the century.

terminology

The word “bombé” is a recent term taken from the French verb bomber, meaning to bulge or jut out. The word had been used to describe both French and English furniture in the nineteenth century. The first publication to use the word to describe American furniture is Esther Singleton’s Furniture of Our Forefathers (New York, 1901), where it is italicized and an obvious French importation. Luke Vincent Lockwood uses “bombé-shaped” to describe a desk in Colonial American Furniture (New York, 1913). “Kettle shape,” the other term used to describe the form, first appears in Frances Clary Morse’s Furniture of the Olden Time (New York, 1902) and is often used by later authors such as Charles Over Cornelius (Early American Furniture [New York, 1926]) in conjunction with the word “bombé.” Although it may seem stilted, “bombé” better connotes the original spirit which gave rise to the form than the word “kettle,” and is thus used throughout this paper.

96. Chest-on-Chest. Boston area, c. 1740–1760. Mahogany, chestnut, and white pine; h. 87⅞ inches, w. 43½ inches, d. 22⅛ inches. (Yale University Art Gallery, Mabel Brady Garvan Collection.)

97. Desk and Bookcase. Made by Benjamin Frothingham and D. Sprage (signatures in pencil), Boston or Charlestown, 1753. Mahogany, red cedar, and white pine; h. 97⅜ inches, w. 44½ inches, d. 24⅝ inches. (The Department of State, Washington, D.C.: photo, Israel Sack, Inc., New York City.) See also fig. 162.

Eighteenth-century manuscripts demonstrate the lack of a specific designation for the bombé form. Inventories of individuals known to have owned bombé furniture offer an unilluminating file of “desks and bookcases” or “chests of drawers” occasionally prefaced by “large,” “carved,” or “mahogany.” A bill for joiner’s work on the pulpit of Christ Church, Spitalfields, London, in 1725–1726, offers one contemporary possibility. It states that the pulpit, which had a distinct bombé shape, is “of right Waint [wainscot] formed Oggee fashon the Pannells fineerd & inlaid.”145 In this case, the bombé design is called “Oggee fashon,” ogee being an architectural term for the cyma reversa. The word “ogee” occasionally appears as a descriptive term in American documents, such as the 1776 shop inventory of the Charlestown cabinetmaker Thomas Wood,146 but it is difficult to determine how inclusive the usage was or what furniture was being described.

The English seem to prefer the French word commode to describe the bombé shape, although this cannot be interpreted as a standard term. In the eighteenth century, the most popular use of the bombé form was on the casepiece of two or three drawers. First appearing in France, the new furniture form was given the name commode en tombeau—literally, “commode in the style of a sarcophagus.” The design was derived from classical sarcophagi. The form was plus commode (more convenient) for storing clothes than the simple chest.147 The fashionable French chest of drawers with bulging sides, simply called a commode, spread throughout Europe. Great Britain soon began producing the bombé form on chests of drawers, some of which copied French furniture while others took a profoundly British cast. The word “commode” entered the English vocabulary as a description of the new style of casepieces, a usage which became available in print to the American colonists in Thomas Chippendale’s The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director. The 1754 edition illustrates both “French Commodes” (fig. 118) modelled on mid-eighteenth-century French furniture,148 and a tall clock (fig. 98) described as having a commode pedestal which is identical in form to the bombé furniture of Boston.

The most logical explanation for the inexact terminology is that an individual word was unnecessary to describe a new furniture form that appealed to a small elite clientele isolated in colonial Boston. In eighteenth-century Boston inventories the word “commode” appears most frequently in reference to the commode chair. Occasional inventories list commode chests or other casepieces, but the exact form is impossible to determine. The adjective “swell’d” is known to have been used to describe both the blockfront and serpentine front on casepieces. Either of these terms may have been utilized for the bombé shape as well; the prospective purchaser would then describe the chosen “swell’d” or “commode” form to the cabinetmaker.

origins and influences

The sources of American bombé furniture present a complex problem. The first native manifestation of Bostonians’ taste for the curvilinear baroque style is found in silver. With its easy transportability, inherent value, and strong dependence on Continental design, silver was probably the vehicle for much of the importation of current English taste in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the 1650s John Hull and Robert Sanderson produced a caudle cup that has virtually the identical shape as the later bombé furniture (fig. 99). The same bombé form—often called “tulip-shape”—continued to be used in such silver objects as teapots, coffee pots, milk pots, and casters throughout the eighteenth century. Perhaps the greatest popularity of the form was achieved in canns and tankards. Indeed, the tulip-shaped cann may be considered one of the distinct marks of Boston silver just as the bombé casepiece is of Boston furniture. The parallel appeal of the form in two mediums is substantiated by Elias Hasket Derby’s purchase of two tulip-shaped canns from Paul Revere in 1783, one year after Cogswell completed the Derby chest-on-chest (fig. 100).

98. Design for a Tall Clock. From Thomas Chippendale, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director, plate cxxxv. London, 1754. (The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum Libraries.)

99. Caudle Cup. Made by John Hull and Robert Sanderson, Boston, c. 1660–1670. Silver; h. 3 ³/₁₆ inches, Diameter of base 2⅝ inches, Diameter of lip 3⅞ inches. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Philip Leffingwell Spalding Collection, given in his memory by Katherine Ames Spalding and Philip Spalding, Oakes Ames Spalding, Hobart Ames Spalding, 42.226.)

The popularity of the silver form seems to show the partiality of Bostonians to the shape but cannot be viewed as the direct source of inspiration for its use in furniture. The close similarity between American and English bombé furniture indicates a more probable source. Through the ties of immigration, trade, and government, England dominated colonial culture. Despite the various types of furniture upon which the bombé form was used, there remains a pervasive adherence in Boston to a single interpretation of bombé design that has a direct counterpart in English furniture dating as early as the mid-1720s.149 England produced a myriad of bombé forms, yet Boston steadfastly produced only one type. The lack of invention may indicate a single source or a number of very similar sources for the Boston patron and cabinetmaker to follow. More likely, it shows the essentially provincial nature of the Boston cultural milieu: Bostonians did not feel sufficiently secure to venture into new, inventive designs but, in the nature of a colonial society, selected, simplified, repeated, and perfected design motifs from the mother country.

100. Cann. Made by Paul Revere, Boston, 1783. Silver; h. 6½ inches. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, 1958, Sandsbury-Mills Fund.) This cann was originally owned by Elias Hasket Derby (1739–1799) of Salem.

101. Desk and Bookcase. Made by James McMillian, Boston, c. 1749–1769. Mahogany and white pine; h. 96 inches, w. 51 inches (before restoration). (Present location unknown. Sold at the American Art Association auction of the estate of Francis Shaw, December 12–14, 1935, lot 472. Restored and sold again at the American Art Association auction of the estate of Albert S. Hill, March 12, 1938, lot 100: photo [before restoration], Decorative Arts Photographic Collection, The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.)

Why Boston should have chosen only this design for the bombé shape is difficult to determine. There is the possibility that an English bombé casepiece of this design was imported to Boston by an influential person. By such means the form could have quickly acquired the symbolic aura of established social and economic stature that it seems to have enjoyed.

Possibly an English design book provided the source for the bombé furniture of Boston. Chippendale’s Director offers a direct prototype. The publication is known to have been available in Boston and all editions contain a number of designs that would offer a simple solution to the question of a source (for example, fig. 98). However, since Frothingham constructed a bombé desk and bookcase a year preceding the publication of the first edition, the stimulus for the bombé form had appeared before the first possible pictorial source. Chippendale is thought to have published designs that were currently in vogue in London; the pieces of furniture that he illustrates were probably made by himself and other cabinetmakers before and after publication.

Thus, Frothingham probably imitated a bombé casepiece already in Boston. Either a London-trained cabinetmaker could have immigrated to Boston and produced an “American” bombé or an English casepiece could have been imported. At this date, a cabinetmaker fitting the necessary qualifications has yet to be identified; the only documented American bombé casepiece known that could predate the Frothingham desk is a desk and bookcase made by James McMillian (fig. 101). McMillian was probably born in Salem and worked in Boston between 1749 and 1769. However, it is unlikely that his desk and bookcase, an unusual example with enormous paw feet, served as the source for Frothingham. More likely, a piece of imported English furniture introduced the bombé form to Frothingham and the rest of Boston.

One English example, a bombé chest-on-chest made about 1740, has a tradition of ownership by Charles Apthorp (1698–1758) of Boston (fig. 102). His inventory lists “a Mohogony Beauro with Glass doors” in the great parlor and “a Mohogony Cabinet with glass doors” in the upstairs dining room;150 either description could refer to the chest. Characterized as the “greatest and most noble merchant on the continent” at his death,151 Apthorp would have given social stature to the new form.

The Apthorp chest may well have been the direct means by which the bombé form reached and became accepted in Boston. The external appearance has the identical bombé shape and use of straight drawer sides found in the Frothingham desk. In respect to overall design, Frothingham displayed a more powerful sense of baroque movement through the use of the swan’s neck pediment. The English chest, distinctly architectural in design, relates to Palladian architecture and the furniture designs of William Kent with elaborate, almost oversized detailing and a heavy pedimented top. The similarity of the bombé base with that of Frothingham’s desk, if it cannot prove the seminal importance of the Apthorp chest, certainly reinforces the theory of the English background of the bombé form as found in Boston. The construction of the lower sections of the pieces of furniture is identical. The differences in overall design and standard of finish are more striking, but are not unusual in any comparison of eighteenth-century Boston and London cabinetmaking. The chest has very fine dovetails, not found in Boston furniture until the nineteenth century; the secondary woods are finely cut oak and deal rather than white pine; dustboards are solid and the back is panelled rather than boarded.

Another example of European bombé furniture with a history of Boston ownership is a desk and bookcase made in the Netherlands about 1740 and said to have been owned by Governor Thomas Hutchinson (1711–1780) (fig. 103).152 The furniture of a royal governor was necessarily impressive and as the governor’s household would probably have been on view to most of the influential colonists, a new form of furniture introduced by the governor might be expected to have an impact on local taste and design. In addition, Governor Hutchinson, who belonged to one of the oldest Massachusetts families, lived in one of the handsomest houses in Boston.153 Nonetheless, this desk and bookcase had virtually no direct impact on Boston bombé furniture. The presence of the bombé form has something of the same spirit found in Boston, but there the similarity ends. The construction of the Dutch desk has no counterpart in Boston cabinetmaking: the bombé form is contained within two bulges on the front of the piece of furniture; the sides are flat; the entire surface is veneered; and corner posts join the sides and the front rails—a feature never found in Boston cabinetwork. The interior construction of Dutch furniture is also quite different from that of Boston, with secondary woods often pieced together and roughly finished and drawers nailed together rather than dovetailed. The squat, heavy proportions and exuberant multiple curves characterizing Dutch furniture are also unrelated to the linear proportion of Boston furniture. The Netherlands is often considered a possible source for American bombé furniture, but the comparison of construction and proportion shows that there is actually very little direct connection between the cabinetmaking traditions.

102. Chest-on-Chest. England, c. 1740–1758. Mahogany, oak, and deal; h. 97 inches, w. 46¾ inches, d. 25½ inches. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of Albert Sack, 1971.737.) According to family tradition, this chest was owned by Charles Apthorp (1698–1758), a wealthy merchant of Boston, and may have been the “Mohogony Beauro with Glass doors” listed in the 1758 inventory of the contents of his King Street house.

English bombé design of the eighteenth century may have served as the inspiration for many craftsmen in Europe as well as in Boston. In a tea table (fig. 104) that has been considered one of the finest examples of eighteenth-century Dutch furniture,154 the bombé design is related to the same tradition found in America, despite the typical Dutch emphasis on the corners. If indeed the table were made in the Netherlands, the simplified line and subdued curve are still profoundly English. The cross-exchange of furniture, designs, and craftsmen between England and the Netherlands became very complex in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Dutch construction and bombé design seem to have had little influence on English cabinetmakers. But, so little is known about Anglo-Dutch furniture design that further research is necessary before any conclusive analysis can be reached.

103. Desk and Bookcase. The Netherlands, c. 1740–1750. Walnut. (Collection of Mr. James W. P. Frost: photo, Antiques.) According to family tradition, this desk was owned by Thomas Hutchinson (1711–1780), one of the last royal governors of Massachusetts.

104. Tea Table. The Netherlands, c. 1745–1755. Walnut; h. 31¾ inches, w. 38¼ inches, d. 25⅜ inches. (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.)

The career of the German Abraham Roentgen (1711–1793), founder of the famous cabinetmaking firm located in Neuweid near Cologne, bears out the theory of English importance in the development of the bombé form in northern Europe. In his bombé furniture Roentgen used the same contour that the Boston cabinetmakers borrowed from London. Roentgen worked in London between 1731 and 1738,155 started the cabinetmaking business in Neuweid in 1750, and sent one of his assistants to be trained in London and to return with an English apprentice. The eminence attached to English cabinetmaking was demonstrated by his son, David Roentgen, who called himself an English cabinetmaker although he had never been in England.

105. Desk and Bookcase. England or Ireland, c. 1750–1770. Mahogany. (Present location unknown. Illustrated in F. Lewis Hinckley, A Directory of Queen Anne, Early Georgian and Chippendale Furniture [New York, 1971], p. 244: photo, © 1971 by F. Lewis Hinckley. Used by permission of Crown Publishers, Inc.)

106. Desk and Bookcase. Boston, c. 1760–1790. Mahogany and white pine; h. 102⅝ inches, w. 48½ inches, d. 23⅜ inches. (The Department of State, Washington, D.C.) According to family tradition, this desk and bookcase descended in the Hancock family of Boston.

English dominance of Boston design can be seen by comparing an English desk and bookcase (fig. 105) with a Boston example (fig. 106). The strong similarity of design between the two desks is immediately evident. In external appearance the English desk could have been made in Boston (except for the door and entablature fretwork and the rococo cartouche, which is more reminiscent of Philadelphia work). Another close resemblance is found in an English desk (fig. 107) and an American desk (fig. 108), which is stamped by G. Cade and which descended in the nineteenth century in the Sylvanus Plympton family of Woburn, Massachusetts.156 The proportions of the two desks are different because of the addition of a fifth drawer in the English example, but the bombé form is much the same in both cases.

The bombé form was popular during the same period in England, Germany, and Boston. Frothingham was constructing his bombé desk and bookcase when Roentgen began to produce similar examples. In 1761 Queen Charlotte of England ordered a bombé secretary from William Vile, the recently appointed cabinetmaker to George III (fig. 109). The invoice in the accounts of St. James’s Palace describes the newly delivered piece of furniture as “an exceedingly ffine mahogy secretary with drawers and a writing drawer, a sett of shelves at Top, and the sides and back all handsome cuttwork.”157 It cost £71. When the Society of Upholsterers and Cabinetmakers of London published the second edition of Genteel Household Furniture in the Present Taste about 1762, they included designs for a bombé clothes press, clothes chest, and pedestal, all employing the form popular in Boston.158

Frothingham’s creation of a bombé casepiece in 1753 demonstrates that Boston taste was concurrent with the London vogue. Boston’s colonial status is reflected in the relative simplicity of decoration, in the repetition of the same form without change, and in the acceptance of this form with all its social import over nearly half a century. The persistent popularity of one furniture design indicates a certain cohesiveness of outlook in the Boston area. Boston was still a relatively small town in the eighteenth century; the confrontation of new, non-English cultural influences in the nineteenth century was still far off. Nor had the new political freedom obtained by the Revolution found expression in cultural life except in the most tentative manner.

Although England was the direct source for Boston bombé furniture, the form was not indigenous to the English sense of design. The interest in the classical past engendered by the Renaissance led to the imitation of Roman sources in Italian furniture. The medieval chest or cassone was brought up to date by incorporating the forms of Roman sarcophagi that often included curvilinear designs closely associated with eighteenth-century bombé furniture. The development of the baroque aesthetic reinforced and aggrandized the bombé character of Renaissance cassoni. Bombé chests spread throughout Europe.159 By the mid-seventeenth century, picturesque ensembles in the baroque style incorporating the bombé form in chimney pieces, door surrounds, altars, tabernacles, memorials, and pedestals were published in France (fig. 110). In the 1680s the painter-designer-architect Charles Lebrun (1619–1690) designed a direct prototype of the first bombé casepieces in the bas-relief over the doors of the Salon de la Guerre at Versailles (fig. 111).160

107. Desk. England, c. 1740–1760. Mahogany. (Present location unknown. Illustrated in H. Avray Tipping, English Furniture of the Cabriole Period [London, 1922], plate iii: photo, The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum Libraries.)

108. Desk. Stamped “G. CADE” (probably the name of an owner), Boston, c. 1755–1775. Mahogany and white pine; h. 42½ inches, w. 45½ inches, d. 25¼ inches. (The Hennage Collection: photo, Israel Sack, Inc., New York City.) See also figs. 119 and 120. This desk was probably owned in the early nineteenth century by George Cade, Jr. (before 1769–1805), a Boston ropemaker, and later passed into the Plympton family of Woburn, Massachusetts.

109. Secretary. Made by William Vile, London, 1761. Mahogany and thujawood; h. 84 inches, w. 37 inches, d. 18 inches. (Buckingham Palace: photo by gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen.) This secretary was constructed for Queen Charlotte of England.

110. Design for a Chimney Piece. From Jean Le Pautre, Cheminées à la Romaine, plate i. Paris, 1688. (The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum Libraries.)

The progenitors of the eighteenth-century bombé casepiece were built by the French cabinetmaker André-Charles Boulle (1642–1732). In 1708 and 1709 he constructed a pair of bombé commodes for the King’s bedroom at the Trianon in the Park of Versailles (fig. 112),161 the earliest examples of casepieces with drawers in the bombé form. The novelty of the commodes lay in the use of drawers extending across the entire width of the chest and sliding into the frame. Although awkwardly suspending a sarcophagus pendant from a flattopped table (both forms retain four legs), the design is an attempt to make the Italian cassone into a more functional and permanent piece of furniture. It was probably the designer Jean Berain (1638–1711) who supplied the resolution to the new design in his Ornemens Inventez par J. Berain, published in Paris about 1710. Berain’s successful unification of the tier of drawers and the supporting legs established the primary model for all eighteenth-century bombé casepieces (fig. 113).

111. Overdoor Detail. By Charles Le Brun and Antoine Coysevox, Salon de la Guerre, Versailles, c. 1680–1685. (Drawing by Corinne Pascoe.)

The anglicization of the commode can be seen by comparing a later French commode in the tradition of Boulle (fig. 114) with a bombé chest of drawers made in England (fig. 115). Although the English example shows the indigenous propensity for a natural wood finish rather than the ornate première-partie inlay and ormolu decoration traditional in French cabinetwork, the underlying design of both casepieces is the same. The full English attainment which developed from this somewhat awkward attempt at the assimilation of the bombé form is seen in the secretary by William Vile (fig. 109) and the clothes press designed by Thomas Chippendale (fig. 116). The best casepieces produced in Boston were only one step behind these English counterparts.

112. Commode. Made by André-Charles Boulle, France, 1708–1709. Oak, tortoiseshell, ormolu, and brass; h. 34¼ inches, w. 51 inches, d. 25⅛ inches. (Versailles: photo, Musées Nationaux Français.) Louis XIV ordered this commode for his bedroom at the Trianon in the Park of Versailles.

England continually responded to French developments in furniture design. By the mid-eighteenth century French cabinetmakers had refined the massive, rectilinear Boulle style into the delicate curvilinear furniture called Louis XV, a development soon adopted in England. A commode designed by William Vile’s partner, John Cobb, in 1772, is a virtual copy of contemporary French furniture (fig. 117). Called French commodes in England, furniture of this type copied the French style with long, slender legs, flaring corners, and a serpentine and bombé front bulging in three dimensions. Although Cobb overlaid the Louis XV style carcass with a veneer in the neoclassical style, the design source is profoundly French.

113. Design for a Commode. From Jean Berain, Ornemens Inventez par J. Berain, p. 41. Paris, c. 1710. (The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum Libraries.)

Designs for similar commodes were available to Bostonians. The Director includes a number of plates in all three editions illustrating French commodes that vary from direct copies of French furniture to heavily anglicized chests of drawers (fig. 118). No variation of style was ever adopted in Boston. Whether the methods of construction were beyond the capabilities of the Boston cabinetmakers or whether the design itself failed to awaken a response in Bostonians is difficult, if not impossible, to determine. All that can be said is that a number of choices for bombé casepieces were available to Bostonians, yet they continually chose one variety.

114. Commode. France, c. 1715–1730. Oak, tortoiseshell, ormolu, and brass; h. 34½ inches, w. 51 inches, d. 23 inches. (The Wallace Collection, London: photo by permission of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection.)

construction

Any study of Boston bombé furniture is dependent upon correct identification. Since few examples bear labels or other inscriptions identifying makers, a close inspection of the inner construction and identification of the different woods is as necessary for the full understanding of a piece of furniture as is the analysis of the exterior proportions and design.

The construction of American bombé furniture bears out the tradition that it was made in Boston or certainly in nearby areas that used the same woods and traditions of craftsmanship. While the primary wood is mahogany, the secondary wood is ordinarily Pinus strobus, or white pine, the wood so favored by Boston cabinetmakers. The small differences in construction—size and number of dovetails, type of moldings, direction of the grain in the bottom of drawers, etc.—can serve as a guide to the identity of the cabinetmaker. The wide variance found in such details in bombé furniture belies the theory that the form was the specialty of only one or two shops. In fact, the names of six cabinetmakers have been linked to American bombé furniture and the list must include at least twice as many as yet unidentified men.

115. Commode. England, c. 1730–1740. Mahogany and oak; h. 36 inches, w. 56 inches, d. 31½ inches. (Victoria and Albert Museum, London.)

116. Design for a Commode Press. From Thomas Chippendale, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Directory plate civ. London, 1754. (The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum Libraries.)

117. Commode. Made by John Cobb, London, 1772. Satinwood, harewood, mahogany, and ormolu; h. 35 inches, w. 39 inches, d. 24½ inches. (Victoria and Albert Museum, London.)

118. Design for a French Commode Table. From Thomas Chippendale, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director, plate xliv. London, 1754. (The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum Libraries.)

Boston bombé furniture is understandably unified in its general construction (fig. 119). The sides are cut from solid pieces of mahogany. The front rails, also mahogany, are dovetailed into the sides; in most cases, a strip of white pine is glued to the back of the rail for added strength and economy. A complete set of solid dust boards is rarely found, but in the traditional Boston manner the rail and attached secondary wood average about six inches in depth. Occasionally a single solid dust board is placed between the second and third drawers to strengthen the sides. The back is composed of vertically or horizontally lapped white pine boards nailed to the top, sides, and bottom. The bottom, also composed of white pine boards, is either flush with or set down from the base rail. Additional strength was provided by glue blocks of various sizes and shapes between the sides and the back, and sometimes between the sides and bottom.

119. Interior of Desk. Stamped “G. CADE.” (The Hennage Collection.) See also figs. 108 and 120. This desk is an example with straight-sided drawers.

120. Detail of Desk Interior. Stamped “G. CADE.” (The Hennage Collection.) See also figs. 108 and 119.

The major differences of Boston-area bombé work are found in the construction of the bombé itself, which can be divided into two major categories and assigned a chronological order. The earliest and least sophisticated method can be seen in the 1753 Frothingham desk (fig. 97). In casepieces of this type, the bulge is contained wholly within the solid mahogany sides. The interior of the bulge is either roughly hacked out to allow for wider and stronger drawer supports or simply smoothed to the vertical surface found in traditional casework construction (fig. 120). Drawer sides are straight in the standard manner; the bombé shape is encompassed only in the forward bulge of the lower two or three drawers. Bombé furniture with straight-sided drawers is the rarer of the two major methods of construction, appearing on about fifteen percent of known American bombé furniture. Since six bombé casepieces with firm dates before the Revolution are constructed in this manner, it is undoubtedly the earlier type of construction. Many desks and bookcases of this type relate stylistically to early eighteenth-century design in the retention of the vestigial molding separating the desk portion of the case from the drawers in the manner of the earlier desk-on-frames. The interior arrangement is usually in the Queen Anne rather than the Chippendale style. The doors of the upper sections have rounded arched panels in the manner of the Queen Anne style, and there is often little or no carving.

In the second major category, the curve of the case side is echoed in the curved construction of the drawer side (fig. 121). This method of construction is basically the same as the earlier method with the exception that the solid pieces of mahogany making up the sides are cut out on the inside to follow the exterior curve. The drawer construction therefore differs by the inclusion of curved sides built to fit the curve of the interior shape of the casepiece.

Although the curved sides of the drawer require greater sophistication of craftsmanship, that fact alone would not necessarily imply a later date. While the majority of bombé casepieces have curved-sided drawers, few can be dated prior to the Revolution. In addition, the aesthetic sense of the second type of bombé is more highly developed. When viewed from the front, the curving line of the drawer sides gives a unified and organic movement to the bombé bulge that is disrupted by the straight line of the straight-sided drawers of the earlier type. Most of the bombé furniture with curved-sided drawers is more developed in the Chippendale idiom, with details such as dentil molding, Chinese fretwork, rococo carving, and, in a few cases, serpentine fronts.

121. Interior of Chest of Drawers. Salem. (The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.) See also fig. 136. This chest is an example with curved-sided drawers.

Both types of construction, the curved- and straight-sided drawer techniques, are found in a rare bombé form, the dressing glass (figs. 122 and 123).162 In both glasses the concept of design is unified through the echoing curves of the spiral supports and bombé base. This particular unity of curvilinear form and detail is a hallmark of Boston bombé cabinetwork. In desks and bookcases the curve of the bombé sides is often repeated in the ogee bracket feet or small cabriole legs, in the door panels of the upper section composed of continuous ogee curves, and in the swan’s neck pediment. In a few of the more ambitious examples, a serpentine curve is added to the front of the base, incorporating the bombé and serpentine curves into a powerful three-dimensional form (fig. 135).

122. Dressing Glass. Boston area, c. 1755–1780. Mahogany and white pine; h. 23⅜ inches, w. 18¾ inches, d. 9½ inches. (The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.)

123. Dressing Glass. Salem area, c. 1765–1780. Mahogany and white pine; h. 28¾ inches, w. 18¾ inches, d. 9½ inches. (The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.)

makers

The makers of only four pieces of Boston bombé furniture have been identified. A desk and bookcase, signed by Benjamin Frothingham and dated 1753, is the earliest documented example of the bombé form in Boston (fig. 97). An unusual bombé desk and bookcase with paw feet and a squatty upper section is labelled by James McMillian of Boston and was made sometime before 1769 (fig. 101). Another desk and bookcase is signed by George Bright, a cabinetmaker of Boston, and was constructed sometime between 1770 and 1792 (fig. 124). A chest-on-chest, signed by John Cogswell and dated 1782, is the latest documented example in Boston (fig. 125).

An outstanding example of the bombé casepiece with curved drawer sides is the desk and bookcase made by George Bright for the Boston merchant Samuel Barrett (figs. 124 and 140). Born in Boston in 1726 and trained by his father, Bright was one of the most successful cabinetmakers in late eighteenth-century Boston.163 His extensive patronage included such important merchants as Thomas Hancock and Caleb Davis. In 1797 he supplied thirty chairs to the new Massachusetts State House.164 The superb quality of craftsmanship evident in the desk and bookcase directly illustrates the reason behind Bright’s immensely successful career. In effect, the desk is truly a Boston creation in all aspects of cabinetmaking, carving, and construction. The bombé shape, short cabriole legs, continuous ogee panels, and swan’s neck pediment create a unity of curvilinear design. Although a massive piece of furniture, the desk is carefully proportioned in the relationship between the lower or desk section and the upper or bookcase section. Much of the detail is composed with respect to the desk or to the bookcase, but the heavy carved feet and double entablature unite the object into a carefully balanced whole. The finely carved garlands in the pediment and the egg and dart molding on the base are examples of elaboration found only on the very finest Boston furniture.

124. Desk and Bookcase. Made by George Bright, Boston, c. 1770–1792. Mahogany and white pine; h. 99½ inches, w. 43 inches, d. 24 inches. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Bequest of Miss Charlotte Hazen, 56.1194.) See also fig. 140. According to family tradition, Samuel Barrett, a Boston merchant, presented this desk to his daughter Ann on her marriage to Isaac Green in 1792.

Samuel Barrett, the original owner of the Bright desk and bookcase, was born in 1738, the son of the Boston merchant John Barrett. His first wife was Mary Clarke, daughter of one of Boston’s richest citizens and the sister of Sukey Clarke, wife of John Singleton Copley. Barrett married his second wife, Elizabeth Salisbury, in 1771; the desk and bookcase is said to have been a wedding present to their daughter Ann when she married Isaac Green in 1792. The desk is signed by George Bright but is not dated. Whether it was made in 1792 as a wedding present or whether it was an inheritance, the desk is an example of the fully developed Chippendale style.

John Cogswell was another Boston cabinetmaker who produced bombé furniture of the highest quality. Born in Ipswich in 1738, he married Abigail Goodwin of Boston in 1762 and established his residence in or near the city at that time. He was working as a cabinetmaker in Boston in 1769, when he rendered a bill to Caleb Davis, merchant of Boston.165 Cogswell rose to a certain amount of prominence and held town offices from 1778 to 1809. The identification of his cabinetwork is based upon a chest-on-chest signed “Made By John / Cogswell in midle Street / Boston 1782” (figs. 125, 139, and 143). Ordered by Elias Hasket Derby of Salem, the chest-on-chest, the first of five made for the Derby family, was probably intended for the new house “by the Wharf” which was then under construction but was later abandoned just before completion.166 A desk and bookcase (fig. 126) neither signed nor supporting a provenance has been attributed to Cogswell because of the close similarity in construction and design with the chest-on-chest. The differences are many in the carving. The pattern of the fret on the upper section is quite different in design though not in scale, the knee brackets have dissimilar carved designs, the finials are totally different, and portions of the carving on the pediment are varied in pattern.

125. Chest-on-Chest. Made by John Cogswell, Boston, 1782. Mahogany and white pine; h. 97 inches, w. 44¼ inches, d. 23½ inches. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, William Francis Warden Fund, 1973.289.) See also figs. 139 and 143. According to family tradition, Cogswell constructed this chest for Elias Hasket Derby (1739–1799) of Salem.

126. Desk and Bookcase. Attributed to John Cogswell, Boston, c. 1770–1790. Mahogany and white pine; H. 95½ inches, w. 45½ inches, D. 22⅝ inches. (The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.) See also fig. 127.

127. Interior of Desk and Bookcase. Attributed to John Cogswell. (The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.) See also fig. 126.

The bombé construction of the two casepieces presents a compromise between the two major techniques of American bombé construction.167 Cogswell has maintained the traditional straight-sided drawer construction but has employed the outward design of curved-sided drawers by allowing only the fronts of the drawers to follow the bombé bulge of the sides (fig. 127). The construction of these two casepieces may be viewed as Cogswell’s own, yet it must not be construed that Cogswell exclusively employed this individual method of construction.

128. Chest of Drawers. Attributed to John Cogswell, Boston, c. 1770–1790. Mahogany and white pine; h. 34¾ inches, w. 38½ inches, D. 24 inches. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Bequest of Maria Theresa Burnham Hopkins, 37.34.) See also fig. 142.

Another variation in drawer construction is seen in a bombé chest of drawers attributed to Cogswell (figs. 128 and 142). The interior of the bulge is cut away in the manner of most American bombé casepieces; but the sides of the drawers are slanted to fit the interior space of the bombé bulge. This variation of the curved-sided drawer technique appears on about one-third of the bombé casepieces that have the interior bulge hollowed out.168 It makes no difference to the outward appearance as the drawer fronts extend very slightly to fill out the curve of the side, but is probably easier to construct. All the other evidence regarding this chest of drawers is so conclusive that it can be safely attributed to Cogswell, but such changes in the method of construction are difficult to interpret without more factual evidence. The elimination of the solid bulge in the chest of drawers may show a developing sophistication in Cogswell’s craftsmanship or the use of the solid bulge in the desk and bookcase and chest-on-chest may have been deemed necessary because of the increased weight of the upper section.

129. Desk and Bookcase. Attributed to Gibbs Atkins, Boston, c. 1770–1790. Mahogany and white pine; h. 100 inches, w. 46 inches, d. 23 inches. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, M. and M. Karolik Collection, 39.181.) See also fig. 130. According to family tradition, this desk and bookcase was owned originally by Gibbs Atkins (1739–1806) and may have been the “desk and bookcase” (valued at £20) listed in the inventory of his estate.

Furniture by or attributed to Cogswell portrays a refinement of outline and diminution of detail that is especially evident in the attenuation of the ionic pilasters and the compression of the bombé bulge. The robust circular curves of the Bright desk are transformed by Cogswell into smaller cabriole legs and ovoid openings in the flattened swan’s neck pediment. The inclusion of fretwork in the entablature and base of the bookcase adds to the sense of linear delicacy. The fully articulated carving expresses the spirit of rococo design; the carving of the finials, unusual in Massachusetts furniture of this period, is a carefully considered balance to the carving on the feet. As with Federal period cabinetmakers, Cogswell carefully chose different colored mahogany to emphasize the various sections of the design. These pieces of furniture create the standard by which Cogswell can be judged as the creator of some of the most outstanding furniture made in late eighteenth-century America.

Although only four cabinetmakers, Bright, Cogswell, Frothingham, and McMillian, are known to have signed bombé casepieces, another cabinetmaker, Gibbs Atkins, may be considered for the list. Born in 1739, Atkins was trained as a cabinetmaker in Boston. Because of his loyalist sympathies, he moved to Halifax with members of his family in 1776, returned to Boston by 1787, and died therein 1806. A desk and bookcase (figs. 129 and 130) that descended in his family has been attributed to him. This alone does not substantiate the attribution, but a similar desk and bookcase with the tradition of being made by Atkins descended in the family of his brother-in-law, Martin Gay (fig. 131).169 The Gay family desk and bookcase has a history that aids in dating the popularity of the bombé form in Boston. Family tradition states that when the loyalist Martin Gay fled Boston in 1776, he took the desk with him to Halifax, Nova Scotia.170 That he would take such a cumbersome piece of furniture on board a British transport points to the relative value of such a desk, for many of the fleeing Tories took only silver and abandoned their furnishings. Gay could have left the desk with his wife, Ruth Atkins Gay, who remained in Boston.171 When he returned in 1792, Gay brought the desk with him. In addition to the historical background, the statement that the desk was taken to Halifax establishes a construction date prior to 1776.

130. Interior of Desk and Bookcase. Attributed to Gibbs Atkins. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, M. and M. Karolik Collection, 39.181.) See also fig. 129.

Another piece of furniture with a history dating its construction to before 1774 is a bombé desk and bookcase which was originally owned by William Greenleaf, a wealthy merchant of Boston and New Bedford (figs. 132 and 133).172 During the preliminary hostilities of 1774, William Greenleaf moved his possessions to Charlestown for storage. With the arrival of the Continental Army, the desk was lent as one of the furnishings of the commander’s lodging, thus escaping the burning of Charlestown. The desk was moved again for George Washington’s use at the Vassall-Longfellow House in Cambridge. The desk is one of the few examples of curved-sided drawer construction to date before the Revolution. A drawer in the bookcase section bears the inscription “June . . . 1771.”

131. Desk and Bookcase. Attributed to Gibbs Atkins, Boston, c. 1770–1776. Mahogany and white pine; h. 100 inches (without center finial), w. 47⅛ inches, D. 23¾ inches. (Collection of Ebenezer Gay: photo, Richard Cheek.) According to family tradition, this desk was owned by Martin Gay (1726–1809) and his wife Ruth (Atkins) Gay, the sister of Gibbs Atkins. A gilded eagle and the lower portions of the finials, both still in the hands of the present owner, were removed to fit the desk into its current location.

132. Desk and Bookcase. Boston, c. 1770–1774. Mahogany and white pine; h. 97¼ inches, w. 47¼ inches, D. 23½ inches. (Old Dartmouth Historical Society, Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Massachusetts: photo, Richard Cheek.) See also fig. 133. According to family tradition, this desk was owned by William Greenleaf (1725–1803), a merchant of Boston and New Bedford.

133. Interior of Desk and Bookcase. Boston. (Old Dartmouth Historical Society, Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Massachusetts: photo, Richard Cheek.) See also fig. 132.

134. Design for a Tea Caddy. From Thomas Chippendale, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Directory plate cxxix. London, 1754. (The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum Libraries.)

Other bombé casepieces dating before the Revolution are a desk and bookcase given to Abigail Phillips upon her marriage to Josiah Quincy, Jr., in 1769;173 a desk and bookcase belonging to Sir William Pepperrell;174 and a tea caddy copied directly from plate cxxix in the first edition of Chippendale’s Director (fig. 134). The tea caddy has the date 1765 written in two places.175 With the acceptance of the bombé form well established by the time of the Revolution, Cogswell’s chest-on-chest demonstrates that the form was favored by the most fashionable clientele into the 1780s. Bombé casepieces with serpentine fronts have a reduction of detail and scale that suggest the delicacy and refinement of the neoclassical style and may well date as late as the 1790s (fig. 135).

135. Desk and Bookcase. Boston, c. 1780–1795. Mahogany and white pine; h. 95½ inches, w. 37½ inches, d. 20½ inches. (The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.) According to family tradition, this desk was owned by Joseph Barrell (1739–1804), a wealthy merchant of Boston who constructed an elegant two-story house at Lechmere Point between 1792 and 1793.

136. Chest of Drawers. Salem, c. 1765–1790. Mahogany and white pine; h. 35¼ inches, w. 40 inches, d. 22 ½ inches. (The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.) See also fig. 121. According to family tradition, this chest was owned by the Waters family of Salem during the late eighteenth century.

A sixth cabinetmaker may be tentatively added to the list of men known to have constructed bombé furniture. A blockfront desk signed by the cabinetmaker Henry Rust (figs. 84 and 85) has construction, detailing, and proportional organization similar to a group of bombé furniture (figs. 136–138). Born in Ipswich, Rust received his training from Jonathan Gavet of Salem176 and could have been the source of the bombé furniture generally attributed to Salem. This furniture is distinguished by a finely carved and strongly realistic quahog shell on the center drop. The greatly elongated knee brackets are shaped in a distinct pattern of two reverse curves balancing a semicircle with small breaks. A chest of drawers in the Winterthur Museum (fig. 136) has a history of descent in the Waters and Osgood families of Salem. A nearly identical chest in the Marblehead Historical Society also descended in the Osgood family. From the history of ownership, stylistic connection with a Salem cabinetmaker, and the peculiarities of form and design that separate this group from other American bombé furniture, it seems likely that case-pieces with the above characteristics are indeed a product of Salem and not Boston proper. Since Rust was working from 1762 to 1800,177 it is impossible to determine if construction predates or postdates the Derby chest-on-chest.178 The bombé form is obviously similar, but the Salem-attributed examples are not constructed with hidden straight-sided drawers (fig. 121). In addition, the so-called “quahog school” has a definite development of increasing sophistication in the design that implies a relatively uneducated first attempt. In the chest of drawers at Winterthur the bombé bulge begins abruptly after the second drawer, thus dividing the visual balance and losing the overall unity of the sides. A chest of drawers at Bayou Bend (fig. 137) incorporates the curve at the second drawer, but the curve is still too pronounced. Other examples from the same group achieve the flowing curve characteristic of the best American design (fig. 13 8).179

137. Chest of Drawers. Salem area, c. 1765–1790. Mahogany and white pine; h. 37½ inches, w. 37¼ inches, d. 21½ inches. (The Bayou Bend Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.)

138. Desk. Salem area, c. 1765–1790. Mahogany and white pine; h. 43½ inches, w. 43⅞ inches, D. 20⅞ inches. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, M. and M. Karolik Collection, 41.574.)

conclusion

To summarize, the antecedents of Boston bombé furniture arose on the Continent. Stemming from Italian design sources, the bombé casepiece was transformed into contemporary usage by French cabinetmakers, then adopted and reinterpreted by English taste, tradition, and craftsmanship before it was accepted in colonial America. In the manner peculiar to the arts, the bombé form cut across ideological and political barriers to appear in both colonial and post-Revolutionary Boston with virtually the same status. The same source in England was open to all the colonies, yet a unique combination of emigrating craftsmen, imported furniture, perhaps Chippendale’s Director, and a response in Bostonian taste resulted in the conscious choice of one furniture form that never appeared in the other colonies.

Although Boston furniture is not comparable to the finest European examples, it is certainly equal to objects owned by the merchant class of London. The overall quality of Boston bombé furniture is representative of the best cabinetwork produced in eighteenth-century Boston. Woods were carefully chosen either for color or for complexity of graining. Carving, when included, usually ranks among the most ornate found on Boston furniture. Construction is light yet accomplished, in the best tradition of Boston cabinetwork. The individuality of many of the examples reflects the number of craftsmen involved in its production, and their number probably increased during the fifty years the form was in demand.

An analysis of ownership shows that the original owners of bombé furniture were among the wealthiest people in Massachusetts. The list includes loyalists such as Governor Hutchinson, Sir William Pepperrell, Charles Apthorp, Edward Brinley, Martin Gay, Gibbs Atkins, and the Vassall family; and patriot and post-Revolutionary merchants such as Joseph Barrell, William Greenleaf, Samuel Barrett, Josiah Quincy, and Elias Hasket Derby. The confines of the Puritan aesthetic seem to have been no barrier to the ownership of relatively ostentatious material possessions; Greenleaf, for example, was the son of a Congregational minister. However, from the few definite family histories, it seems that Anglicans were more disposed to the bombé form than were Congregationalists.

The bombé form was as popular after the Revolution as it was under colonial rule. This continuity demonstrates that the aspirations of the American Revolution were political; a revolution in cultural values was apparently not considered, as many of the revolutionaries took up the outward trappings of the departed loyalists. Thus the bombé furniture of Boston stands as a profound and vivid representation of the taste of eighteenth-century Bostonians.

1. Major regional studies are in chronological order by state: The Decorative Arts of New Hampshire 1725–1825 (Manchester, New Hampshire, 1964); The Decorative Arts of New Hampshire: A Sesquicentennial Exhibition (Concord, New Hampshire, 1973); Ralph E. Carpenter, Jr., The Arts and Crafts of Newport, Rhode Island, 1640–1820 (Newport, Rhode Island, 1954); The John Brown House Loan Exhibition of Rhode Island Furniture (Providence, Rhode Island, 1965); Three Centuries of Connecticut Furniture 1635–1935 (Hartford, Connecticut, 1935); Connecticut Furniture, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Hartford, Connecticut, 1967); Joseph Downs and Ruth Ralston, A Loan Exhibition of New York State Furniture (New York, 1934); V. Isabelle Miller, Furniture by New York Cabinetmakers, 1650–1860 (New York, 1956); New York Furniture before 1840 in the Collection of the Albany Institute of History and Art (Albany, 1962); Margaret E. White, Early Furniture Made in New Jersey, 1690–1870 (Newark, New Jersey, 1958); William M. Hornor, Jr., Blue Book, Philadelphia Furniture: William Penn to George Washington (Philadelphia, 1935); Baltimore Furniture: The Work of Baltimore and Annapolis Cabinetmakers from 1760 to 1810 (Baltimore, 1947); William Voss Elder iii, Maryland Queen Anne and Chippendale Furniture of the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore, 1968); E. Milby Burton, Charleston Furniture, 1700–1825 (Charleston, South Carolina, 1955).

2. Mabel Munson Swan wrote numerous articles on New England furniture of the eighteenth century. Her most important study of Boston is a two-part article entitled “Boston’s Carvers and Joiners,” Antiques, lii (March and April, 1948), 198–201, 281–285. Other material by Mabel Swan is cited in a bibliography at the end of this volume.

3. While Richard Randall has several outstanding articles to his credit (see the bibliography), his best-known work is American Furniture in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, 1965). This catalogue includes well-documented pieces of Boston furniture made throughout the century. Benno Forman and Vernon Stoneman have contributed specific studies on furniture produced at the beginning and end of the century, respectively. See Benno M. Forman, “Urban Aspects of Massachusetts Furniture in the Late Seventeenth Century,” Winterthur Conference Report 1969: Country Cabinetwork and Simple City Furniture (Charlottesville, Virginia, 1970); Vernon C. Stoneman, John and Thomas Seymour, Cabinetmakers in Boston, 1794–1816 (Boston, 1959) and A Supplement to John and Thomas Seymour, Cabinetmakers in Boston, 1794–1816 (Boston, 1966).

4. Gordon Saltar who spoke on wood analysis as an aid to the study of New England furniture submitted the most useful portions of his highly specialized paper for publication: a list of New England cabinet woods and an annotated bibliography on the identification of woods.

5. A side chair and lolling chair in the Winterthur Museum bear the stamps of Stephen Badlam, a cabinetmaker of Dorchester, and the unidentified S. F. Charles Montgomery speculated that S. F. may have been the initials of a Boston journeyman working for Badlam during the 1790s. A likely candidate is Samuel Fisk, a Boston cabinetmaker who died in 1797. Charles F. Montgomery, American Furniture, the Federal Period in the Henry Francis du Font Winterthur Museum (New York, 1966), nos. 30, 110.

6. Some Cursory Remarks Made by James Birket in his Voyage to North America 1750–1751, ed. Charles M. Andrews (New Haven, 1916), p. 24.

7. In this paper no distinction is made between joiners known to have made furniture and cabinetmakers. For more information on the use of the two terms in colonial Boston, see Benno M. Forman, “Urban Aspects of Massachusetts Furniture in the Late Seventeenth Century,” Winterthur Conference Report 1969: Country Cabinetwork and Simple City Furniture (Charlottesville, Virginia, 1970), pp. 17–20.

8. An appendix at the back of this volume includes these workmen in a list of furniture craftsmen active in Boston during the eighteenth century. For comparable statistics for Philadelphia, see Arthur W. Leibundguth, “The Furniture-Making Crafts in Philadelphia, c. 1730–1760” (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Delaware, 1964), pp. 132–136.

9. Bernard and Lotte Bailyn, Massachusetts Shipping, 1697–1714: A Statistical Study (Cambridge, 1959), pp. 42–47, 49–50, 74–76; Wesley Frank Craven, The Colonies in Transition 1660–1713 (New York, 1968), pp. 307–310.

10. Thomas Hancock, Daybook, May 27 and December 29, 1738 (Baker Library, Harvard University).

11. Suffolk County Inferior Court of Common Pleas, Boston, Massachusetts, December 21, 1741 (hereafter Suffolk Common Pleas).

12. Ibid., January 18, 1750.

13. For example, see Peter Faneuil, Daybook, May 11, 1732, p. 389 (Baker Library, Harvard University).

14. Quoted in Richard H. Randall, Jr., “Boston Chairs,” Old-Time New England, liv (Summer, 1963), 12–13.

15. Ebenezer Call to William Call, Philadelphia, January 15, 1762, Gratz Papers (The Historical Society of Pennsylvania [photostat copy, Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum Libraries, Joseph Downs Manuscript Collection]).

16. Samuel Abbot, Account Book, 1754–1808, pp. 21–22, 41–42 (Baker Library, Harvard University).

17. It is possible that these chairs may also have been of Boston origin, since the term “Philadelphia chair” was a generic one for any type of Windsor chair.

18. In this context, “Laced” could either mean “diversified with streaks of color” (A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 10 vols. [Oxford, 1905], vi, part i, 11) or be an abbreviation for “lacquered.”

19. See accounts between Henchman and William Downe, a Boston upholsterer, xv, Domestic Bills, January 24, 1743, Hancock Papers (Baker Library, Harvard University). See also accounts between Bond and Thomas Gibbons and Lanier Kenn, two cabinetmakers in partnership, Suffolk Common Pleas, December 15, 1733.

20. For complete documentation on the shop locations of Boston’s furniture craftsmen, see Brock Jobe, “The Boston Furniture Industry 1725–1760” (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Delaware, 1975).

21. James A. Henretta, “Economic Development and Social Structure in Colonial Boston,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., xxii (January, 1965), 81–88.

22. Suffolk County Superior Court of General Sessions, Boston, Massachusetts, docket 21711.

23. Thomas B. Wyman, The Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown, 2 vols. (Boston, 1879), i, 381–395.

24. The only records documenting immigration into Boston between 1700 and 1760 are ship impost records for the years 1715 and 1716. These incomplete records list the names of eight newly arrived joiners and cabinetmakers from London, Bristol, Ireland, Barbados, Long Island, and North Carolina. Obviously, many others ventured to Boston, but unfortunately their names rarely appear in town records. A Volume of Records Relating to the Early History of Boston Containing Miscellaneous Papers, xxix (Boston, 1900), 229–242 (hereafter Miscellaneous Papers).

25. Andrew Burnaby, Travels Through the Middle Settlements in North-America in the Years 1759 and 1760, 2nd ed. (1775; rpt. Ithaca, New York, 1960), pp. 103–104. For information on the decline in trade, see Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness (1938; rpt. Oxford, 1971), pp. 303, 330–336.

26. E. Milby Burton, Charleston Furniture 1700–1825 (Charleston, 1955), p. 127.

27. Warham purchased goods from Samuel Gardner, a Boston shopkeeper, on October 9, 1724. See Suffolk Common Pleas, December 14, 1730.

28. Ibid., March 22, 1731, August 28, 1732.

29. Ibid., March 3, 1733.

30. Quoted in Burton, Charleston, p. 126.

31. Ibid., pp. 126–127.

32. For information pertaining to Holmes’s life, see George Arthur Gray, The Descendants of George Holmes of Roxbury 1594–1908 (Boston, 1908), pp. 16, 28–30.

33. Miscellaneous Papers, p. 223.

34. Thomas Atkins to Nathaniel Holmes, Boston, viii, Bills, March 16, 1748, Bourn Papers (Baker Library, Harvard University).

35. The inventory totalled £3885:0:3. Suffolk County Registry of Probate, Boston, Massachusetts, docket 15727 (hereafter Suffolk Probate Records).

36. The following information is based on accounts between Holmes and John Mudge, Jacob Burdit, and Mary Jackson, 55.523–525, 55.764.2 (Winterthur Libraries, Joseph Downs Manuscript Collection) and two folders of bills and receipts in the Bourn Papers, vi, Accounts Current 1727–1738, and viii, Bills 1728–1759 (Baker Library, Harvard University).

37. Birth records have only been found for Johnson, Mudge, Burdit, and Sherburne, all of whom were born after 1708. Woodward was called Holmes’s apprentice in 1736 and must have been in his early twenties when hired by his former master. Jeremiah Townsend to Nathaniel Holmes, Boston, vi, Accounts Current, February 1, 1739, Bourn Papers (Baker Library, Harvard University).

38. Thomas Sheraton, The Cabinet Dictionary (London, 1803), plate xv.

39. John Mudge to Nathaniel Holmes, Maiden, Massachusetts, January 6, 1738, 55.524 (Winterthur Libraries, Joseph Downs Manuscript Collection).

40. A desk at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has small arched drawers above the pigeonholes and a concealed well in the desk interior. See Richard H. Randall, Jr., American Furniture in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, 1965), fig. 55.

41. Richard Woodward to Nathaniel Holmes, Boston, vi, Accounts Current, December 12, 1737, Bourn Papers (Baker Library, Harvard University).

42. John Mudge to Nathaniel Holmes, Maiden, Massachusetts, January 6, 1738, 55.524 (Winterthur Libraries, Joseph Downs Manuscript Collection).

43. This is one of the earliest references to an American bureau table. According to Nancy Goyne Evans, the form did not become popular in New England until after 1750. Evidently Woodward constructed an elegant table, for he charged Holmes six pounds, a sum equivalent to that for a large desk. Richard Woodward to Nathaniel Holmes, Boston, vi, Accounts Current, December 12, 1737, Bourn Papers (Baker Library, Harvard University). See also Nancy Goyne Evans, “The Bureau Table in America,” Winterthur Portfolio III (Winterthur, Delaware, 1967), pp. 25–27.

44. Toes probably refer to the unusual adaptation of the Spanish foot seen on the japanned high chest made by John Pimm (fig. 37). Similar feet appear on dressing tables at Historic Deerfield and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

45. For genealogical material on Fitch, see Ezra S. Stearns, “The Descendants of Dea. Zachary Fitch of Reading,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, lv (July, 1901), 289, 291.

46. Fitch’s immense estate was never completely settled. He owned land in forty towns in addition to all of Gallops Island. Suffolk Probate Records, docket 6868.

47. In a letter of October 20, 1725, Fitch described Grant as “my Young man,” a phrase often used for an apprentice. Thomas Fitch to Silas Hooper, Boston, Fitch Letterbook (Massachusetts Historical Society).

48. For genealogical information on Grant, see W. Henry Grant, Ancestors and Descendants of Moses Grant and Sarah Pierce (Lebanon, Pennsylvania, n.d.), pp. 3, 9–10, 12.

49. No inventory was taken of Grant’s personal property and real estate. In his will he left £466:13:4 to his grandson, John Simpkins, £400 to his granddaughter, Mary Thatcher Simpkins, and cancelled the debts owed to him by his son-in-law, John Simpkins. The remainder of the bequest went to Moses Grant. Suffolk Probate Records, docket 18314.

50. The author is aware of ten volumes which span the first seventy years of the eighteenth century. For the purposes of this paper, only portions documenting business activities between 1720 and 1740 will be considered. See Thomas Fitch, Letterbook, 1702–1711 (American Antiquarian Society); Letterbook, 1714–1717 (New England Historic Genealogical Society); Letterbook, 1723–1733 (Massachusetts Historical Society); Account Book, 1719–1732 (Massachusetts Historical Society); Account Book, 1732–1736 (Massachusetts Historical Society); Samuel Grant, Account Book, 1728–1737 (Massachusetts Historical Society); Receipt Book, 1731–1740 (The Bostonian Society); Account Book, 1737–1760 (American Antiquarian Society); Petty Ledger, 1755–1762 (Boston Public Library); Petty Ledger, 1762–1771 (Boston Public Library).

51. Thomas Fitch to Isaac DeRiemer, Boston, August 7, 1704, Fitch Letterbook (American Antiquarian Society).

52. Thomas Fitch, Account Book, May 22, 1724, p. 281 (Massachusetts Historical Society).

53. Ibid., September 11, 1725, p. 351.

54. Thomas Fitch to John East, Boston, April 6, 1725, Fitch Letterbook (Massachusetts Historical Society).

55. Ibid., December 8, 1731.

56. Ibid., Thomas Fitch to Silas Hooper, Boston, December 15, 1725.

57. Ibid.

58. Florence M. Montgomery, Printed Textiles: English and American Cottons and Linens 1700–1850 (New York, 1970), pp. 49, 55–56.

59. The upholsterer was John East. See Samuel Grant, Account Book, April 11, 1735, p. 383 (Massachusetts Historical Society). The chairmaker was Edmund Perkins. See Thomas Fitch, Account Book, January 15, 1725, p. 312 (Massachusetts Historical Society); Samuel Grant, Account Book, February 12, 1730, p. 35 (Massachusetts Historical Society).

60. Samuel Grant, Account Book, February 4, 1732, p. 132 (Massachusetts Historical Society).

61. Ibid., July 12, 1731, p. 106.

62. Ibid., July 19, 1737, p. 590.

63. Harrateen had been in limited use in Boston from at least 1726. Thomas Fitch commented on the new fabric in that year, when he wrote to a patron in New York: “I concluded it would be difficult to get Such a Calliminco as you proposed to Cover the Ease Chair, and haveing a very Strong thick Harratine which is vastly more fashionable and handsome than a Calliminco I have sent you an Ease Chair Cover’d w[i]th sd Harrateen w[hi]ch I hope will Sute You.” Thomas Fitch to Madam Hooglant, Boston, March 9, 1726, Fitch Letterbook (Massachusetts Historical Society).

64. Abbott Lowell Cummings, Bed Hangings: A Treatise on Fabrics and Styles in the Curtaining of Beds 1650–1850 (Portland, Maine, 1961), p. 18.

65. Thomas Fitch to Colonel Coddington, Boston, June 26, 1727, Fitch Letterbook (Massachusetts Historical Society).

66. Thomas Fitch, Account Book, May 4, 1720, p. 84 (Massachusetts Historical Society).

67. Samuel Grant, Account Book, October 14, 1729, p. 29 (Massachusetts Historical Society).

68. Ibid., November 21, 1730, p. 65.

69. This notch is often seen on Boston furniture of the Queen Anne style. See, for example, a japanned high chest in the collection of the New Haven Colony Historical Society. Elizabeth Rhoades and Brock Jobe, “Recent Discoveries in Boston Japanned Furniture,” Antiques, cv (May, 1974), 1082–1091.

70. Samuel Grant, Account Book, January 22, 1732, p. 131 (Massachusetts Historical Society).

71. Ibid., April 29, 1732, p. 146.

72. Gertrude Z. Thomas, “Lacquer: Chinese, Indian, ‘Right’ Japan, and American,” Antiques, lxxix (June, 1961), 572–575. For information on Boston japanning, see Joseph Downs, “American Japanned Furniture,” Old-Time New England, xxviii (October, 1937), 61–67; Esther Stevens Brazer, “The Early Boston Japanners,” Antiques, xliii (May, 1943), 208–211; Richard H. Randall, Jr., American Furniture in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, 1965), pp. 66–68; Dean A. Fales, Jr., American Painted Furniture 1660–1880 (New York, 1972), pp. 58–69; and Sinclair Hitchings, “Thomas Johnston,” Boston Prints and Printmakers 1670–1775, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, xlvi (1973), 83–131.

73. Ralph Edwards, The Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture (London, 1964), pp. 327–331.

74. Illustrated in “Benjamin Bagnall of Boston, Clockmaker,” Old-Time New England, xxvi (July, 1935), 31; and Harvard Tercentenary Exhibition (Cambridge, 1936), no. 257, pl. 46.

75. This high chest was brought to my attention after completion of the article. Richard H. Randall, Jr., discusses and illustrates the chest in “William Randall, Boston Japanner,” Antiques, cv (May, 1974), 1127–1131.

76. Two signatures appear on one of the drawer dividers in the upper section. The featured one is “Robert Davis” and the other, in smaller script, appears to be “Re. Damini.” The initials “W R,” possibly those of William Randle, another Boston japanner, also appear on a drawer of the chest. This information was kindly provided by Brock Jobe. See Elizabeth Rhoades and Brock Jobe, “Recent Discoveries in Boston Japanned Furniture,” Antiques, cv (May, 1974), 1082–1091.

77. For more information on Brown and a copy of the advertisement, see David Hansen, “Gawen Brown, Soldier and Clockmaker,” Old-Time New England, xxx (July, 1939), 1–9.

78. See Helen Comstock, American Furniture (New York, 1962), fig. 187. The date 1766 on the Ford example appears to have been added to the nameplate, and the clock is probably earlier than this date—perhaps before 1752 when Brown had moved to King Street.

79. See Esther Stevens Fraser, “A Pedigreed Lacquered Highboy,” Antiques, xv (May, 1929), 398–401; and Joseph Downs, American Furniture, Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods in the Henry Francis du Font Winterthur Museum (New York, 1952), no. 188.

80. Other works include The Ladies Amusement, or Whole Art of Japanning Made Easy (London, n.d., c. 1760); and George Edwards and Mathias Darly, New Book of Chinese Designs (London, 1754).

81. For japanned English clocks with Boston-area histories, see Antiques, xliii (May, 1943), 209; Martha Gandy Fales, “Thomas Wagstaffe, London Quaker Clockmaker,” The Connoisseur, cli (November, 1962), 198–201; and Wallace Nutting, The Clock Book (Framingham, Massachusetts, 1924), fig. 80.

82. Thomas Johnston’s trade card is reproduced in Hitchings, “Thomas Johnston,” p. 87.

83. A good description of the earlier and later methods of japanning is found in [Thomas Dobson, comp.], Encyclopaedia; Or A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature (Philadelphia, 1798), ix, 72–76. For a later example with a Boston history, see Antiques, lxxxi (April, 1962), 346.

84. Comstock, American Furniture, fig. 174.

85. See Lawrence Shaw Mayo, The Winthrop Family in America (Boston, 1948); Frank Augustine Gardner, Gardner Memorial (Salem, 1933).

86. See Fales, American Painted Furniture, pp. 36–38; 62.

87. For more information on Johnston, see Sinclair Hitchings, “Thomas Johnston,” Boston Prints and Printmakers 1670–1775, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, xlvi (1973), 83–131.

88. For information on Pendleton, see Suffolk County Registry of Probate, Boston, Massachusetts, docket 3380; The Diary of Samuel Sewall, Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 5th ser., vi (1879), 333. For Hughes, see the 1726 volume of the records of the Suffolk County Inferior Court of Common Pleas, Boston, Massachusetts, pp. 45, 171. For references to Gore as a japanner, see Suffolk County Registry of Deeds, Boston, Massachusetts, lxxiv, 173–174, 200. See also George Francis Dow, The Arts and Crafts in New England 1704–1775 (1927; rpt. New York, 1967), pp. 239–243; William Whitmore, A Brief Genealogy of the Gore Family Especially in the Line of Gov. Christopher Gore (Boston, 1875), pp. 5–6.

89. Various details are quoted, for instance, in Mabel M. Swan’s article, “The Johnstons and the Reas—Japanners,” Antiques, xliii (May, 1943), 211–213.

90. Andrew Burnaby, Travels Through the Middle Settlements in North-America in the Years 1759 and 1760, 2nd ed. (1775: rpt. Ithaca, New York, 1960), p. 101.

91. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1961), i, 294.

92. William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, ed. Joseph Burke (Oxford, 1955), p. 65. First published in 1753.

93. “Ogee” (or “OG”), according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a term of obscure derivation which was defined in eighteenth-century England as “a Moulding, somewhat resembling an S” (T.N. City and C. Purchaser), or more generally “Any curve or line having this form.”

94. In Newport cabinetmaker John Cahoone’s account book (Newport Historical Society), it appears from the prices paid for such items as “a mahogany OG Case of Draws” (mentioned on p. 38, 1754, and on p. 83, 1759)—being as much as half again as much as items listed as “a mahogany case of drawers”—they must have been singular in more than the moldings used. An oxbow or breasted front might be equally described by the general term “OG” but the blockfront, being by far the most common at that time, is more likely. No labelled furniture is known from the workshop of Cahoone or from those of the cabinetmakers employed by him. Another term which may have been used to describe the blockfront is “swell’d.” In a letter of 1763 (quoted by R. Peter Mooz, in “The Origins of Newport Block-Front Furniture Design,” Antiques, xcix [June, 1971], 882), John Goddard of Newport writes to a patron: “there is a sort which is called a Chest on Chest of Drawers & Sweld. front which are Costly as well as ornimental. . . .” Similarly, Thomas Wood of Charlestown, Massachusetts, used this term in his 1776 claim for restitution of property damaged by the British: “Three swell front Desks” (Mabel M. Swan, “Furnituremakers of Charlestown,” Antiques, xlvi [October, 1944], 204). Although “blocked” is the usual modern term applied to these facades, other terms have been applied. For instance, Percy Macquoid in his History of English Furniture, 4 vols. (London, 1906), iii, 49–52, figs. 39, 40, speaks of a (probably Boston) desk with “tubbed and recessed surfaces.”

95. The labelled John Townsend desk (Israel Sack, Inc., New York), the labelled Edmund Townsend kneehole bureau (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), and flat-façaded chests of drawers signed by Constant Bailey (in a private collection, North Carolina) and Benjamin Baker (Newport Restoration Foundation) all display this characteristic.

96. A blockfront desk with a history of ownership in Delaware, and probable manufacture in that state, is at Colonial Williamsburg. Although unorthodox in many of its details, the case construction is similar to that used in Newport.

97. Secondary woods are typically white pine for Boston, and chestnut or tulip wood for Newport. Newporters also generally favored a lighter tone to the mahogany in their facades. James Birket in Some Cursory Remarks Made . . . in his Voyage to North America 1750–1751, ed. Charles M. Andrews (New Haven, 1916), p. 24, noted of Boston in 1750, “but now their woods are very much Cut down and destroy’d and what they have is brought along way by land Carriage.” It seems reasonable to assume that the omnipresent white pine in Boston is a matter of choice as much as of convenience.

98. See Nancy Goyne Evans, “The Genealogy of a Bookcase Desk,” Winterthur Portfolio 9 (Charlottesville, Virginia, 1974), pp. 213–222.

99. Job Coit, Sr., was born in 1692, and is known to have been working in Boston by 1718. His business was located on Ann Street in 1731, and he died in 1742.

100. It has been thought that the West Indies in general, and Havana in particular, were a source for baroque-inspired blockfronted pieces in North America. Wendell Garrett, “Speculations on the Rhode Island Block-Front in 1928,” Antiques, xcix (June, 1971), 887–891. There are other closer and earlier precedents than the Havana cathedral furniture, but the idea might well have migrated from Europe via the West Indies as easily as via Great Britain.

101. Charles Townsend, 1375 to 1897: The Direct Ancestry and Posterity of Judge Charles Townsend, A Pioneer of Buffalo, New York (Orange, New Jersey, 1897), p. 29; Charles Townsend Rich, Genealogy of the Townsend Family (Buffalo, 1877), p. 17.

102. Jeremiah must have known Rebecca before she was widowed, as he removed from Boston to New Haven in 1739 and she was not widowed until 1745.

103. The Newport Townsends spring from a triumvirate of brothers, John, Henry, and Richard, of Norfolk, England; the Boston Townsends trace their lineage to Thomas of Gedding, Suffolk.

104. Ingraham still owned property in Boston until 1752. See the settlement of the estate of Lydia Coit, Suffolk County Registry of Probate, Boston, Massachusetts, docket 9797 (hereafter Suffolk Probate Records).

105. The former is on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the latter is at Historic Deerfield.

106. See the frontispiece of Antiques, lxxxvi (October, 1964), 430–431; also Mooz, “Origins of Newport Block-Front Furniture Design,” pp. 882–886. The men who are known to have made blockfronts, John Townsend, Edmund Townsend, and probably John Goddard, were not born until 1733, 1736, and 1724, respectively. There is no evidence that the older generation, Christopher and Job Townsend, made blockfronts.

107. The drawer construction and protruding drawer dividers are unusual but not unknown in Boston. The distinctive solution to the problem of joining the walnut frame to the secondary wood on the case bottom is not used in other examples known to the author.

108. Thomas Cushing, Jr., Waste Book, September 8, 1739 (Baker Library, Harvard University).

109. Pegs anchoring a mortise and tenon joint are uncommon at this date (c. 1740) in an urban area and a Queen Anne design.

110. 63 × 69 (Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum Libraries, Joseph Downs Manuscript Collection).

111. There is a small group of related examples. See Frances Clary Morse, Furniture of the Olden Times, 2nd ed. (New York, 1917), p. 34. A high chest illustrated in Antiques, c (July, 1971), 13, has similar decorative motifs.

112. There is, however, one reference to a Joseph Davis in 1742 who is paid five shillings by Katherine Davis, widow and executrix of James Davis, a blockmaker of Boston. This list of disbursements also includes three pounds paid to Job Coit for a coffin. Suffolk Probate Records, docket 6911.

113. There is an unblocked Boston desk and bookcase at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (figs. 70 and 71), roughly contemporary with the Coit-Davis products, which possibly shows the very finest of contemporary cabinetwork—that which served as their model. Several design motifs which are executed here are abbreviated by Coit and Davis: the inlaid stars (in the M.F.A. desk, in tricolor and two parts; in the Davis, simplified), the fans above the bookcase section (in the M.F.A. desk, carved in undulating three dimensions; in the Coit, flattened in inlay), the scribe line around the bonnet (in the M.F.A. desk, in two-color inlay; in the Coit, a simple incised line), the amphitheater desk interior (greatly simplified in the Coit), and the round-capped recessed interior blocking (in the M.F.A. desk, a minor feature; in the Coit, the central feature).

114. They are owned by Yale, Ginsburg and Levy, Inc., New York, and John S. Walton, Inc., New York. They are made of mahogany or walnut with unusual secondary woods: the Ginsburg and Levy interior is red cedar, Yale’s is white oak and chestnut. Walton’s has the usual white pine, but lacks the doors over the upper set of drawers. The Ginsburg and Levy chest has mirrored doors, a drop below the bottom front, and a molding between the top and bottom halves; the other two lack these additions. A similar example with inlaid stars, side columns, and a bonnet top is owned by the Henry Ford Museum.

115. “It is thought by the family that this piece was made for Dr. John Sprague of Dedham, and it is known to have descended in the Swett and Green families. Samuel Swett, of Boston, married Elizabeth Sprague in 1800.” Letter to the author from Hazel Kimball of John Walton, Inc., March 2, 1973.

116. As the chest-on-chests in this form are approximately of the same vintage, the link between the makers is more likely to be a matter of style distribution than of apprenticeship.

117. There were three cabinetmakers of this name, living respectively 1708–1765, 1734–1809, and 1774–1832. The label on this chest is that of the second of the name. See Thomas B. Wyman, The Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown, 2 vols. (Boston, 1879), i, 381–395.

118. According to a checklist of cabinetmakers in the American Decorative Arts Department, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Treadwell was working in Beverly in 1799.

119. Stamping, although known in France, is uncommon in America until the late eighteenth century when it was used by French emigré cabinetmakers and Windsor chairmakers to identify their widely distributed wares.

120. Watson was working between 1737 and 1762 and possibly to 1790. See Dean A. Fales, Jr., Essex County Furniture: Documented Treasures from Local Collections 1660–1860 (Salem, Massachusetts, 1965), fig. 44; Benno M. Forman, “Salem Tradesmen and Craftsmen Circa 1762: A Contemporary Document,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, cvii (January, 1971), 65, 73.

121. Samuel Chamberlain, Salem Interiors: Two Centuries of New England Taste and Decoration (New York, 1950), p. 85; Fales, Essex County Furniture, fig. 44.

122. Richard H. Randall, Jr., American Furniture in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, 1965), fig. 41.

123. A blockfront chest-on-chest signed by Nathan Bowen of Marblehead and dated 1774 fits into this period as well. See Richard H. Randall, Jr., “An Eighteenth Century Partnership,” The Art Quarterly, xxiii (Summer, 1960), 153–161.

124. Another of the many examples of this form is to be found in the Bennington Museum, Bennington, Vermont.

125. It bears the names “E. Wasgatt,” “Sarah Hayes Wasgatt,” and “Mary Wasgatt.” They were the daughters of Thomas Wasgatt of Maine; “E. Wasgatt,” Eunice, married David Bradstreet of Mount Desert in 1792, so this desk must predate that marriage. It is now in the Garvan Collection at Yale.

126. The fall front and central interior fan-carved door are new, the bottom of the case has been replaced in part (the front four inches are new). The brasses have been changed twice.

127. This desk differs in construction with a high chest signed by Frothingham in the Winterthur Museum. See, in particular, the dovetails and drawer runners—the latter in the Deerfield desk have vertical insets, a very unusual feature.

128. In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is a desk almost identical in form and construction.

129. William Claggett, clockmaker, moved from Boston to Newport in 1726. James Franklin, the brother of Benjamin Franklin, moved his printing business to Newport in 1727. Samuel Casey, a silversmith of Rhode Island, served his apprenticeship in Boston and set up shop outside Newport about 1750, to mention a few examples.

130. Godfrey Malbone and the Deblois family maintained large commercial establishments in both cities.

131. Abraham Redwood, Letterbook, iii, 7 (Newport Historical Society). See also William Ellery, Daybook, 1737, folio 72 (Newport Historical Society): “Father Almy [kin to Townsend cabinetmakers] to 1 barrell of Loaf sugar bought for you in Boston by Greenleaf £28:3:8; to a Try ton painting & carting £13: 15:6.”

132. Ezra Stiles, Miscellany, 1758–1762, p. 339, undated entry probably 1762 (Beinecke Library, Yale University). Several accounts, such as those found in the Jonathan (?) Marsh Account Book (Newport Historical Society)—where notations for 1754, 1755, and 1764 suggest that the scope of the Newport meeting was enlarged to include delegates from the Jerseys, Philadelphia, and England—attest to the accuracy of Stiles’s report.

133. The signature on this piece is a gouged “H x Rust” on the bottom of the case—an unusual but not implausible means of identification (fig. 85).

134. In the registrar’s files at the Winterthur Museum there is a photograph of this desk (c. 1870) with the captions: “Great Grandfather Joseph Waters’s Desk: sold by Sarah W.” and “From Cousin Fitz. Photo of Great Grandfather Waters’s Desk and Bookcase. Molly Mott leaning against it, Waters’ House, Washington Square [Salem].” See Joseph Downs, American Furniture, Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods in the Henry Francis du Font Winterthur Museum (New York, 1952), no. 225.

135. It bears the inscription “William H. Allen,” probably a nineteenth-century owner of the desk.

136. According to The Centennial of the Social Circle in Concord (Cambridge, 1882), p. 114, Joseph Hosmer’s father, James, “purchased . . . the farm belonging to Joseph Shevally, a Frenchman, who married his cousin Sarah Hosmer. . . . Robert Rosier, a Frenchman, married Mary Chevally, and lived near the bridge. . . . He was a very excellent cabinetmaker, and Major Hosmer learned his trade from him.”

137. Cited (no source given) in a letter to the author from Amelia F. Emerson, March, 1972.

138. See Kenneth Scott and Russell H. Kettell, “Joseph Hosmer, Cabinetmaker,” Antiques, lxxiii (April, 1958), 356–359.

139. The Memorial History of Boston, ed. Justin Winsor, 4 vols. (Boston, 1881), ii, 121–122 fn.

140. Eliza Susan Quincy, “Memoir,” i, 54 (Massachusetts Historical Society).

141. Josiah Quincy’s inventory of 1784 includes “1 Chest of old fineered Draws 24 [shillings],” and “1 Japan Chest Draws 36 [shillings].” The japanned chest is still in the house. Suffolk Probate Records, docket 18158.

142. “List of Pictures and Furniture etc. in the House built 1770 in 1879, by Eliza Susan Quincy,” pp. 32–33 (current location unknown [photostat copy, Winterthur Libraries, Joseph Downs Manuscript Collection]).

143. Similar carving is found on the feet and drop of several other Boston-area blocked casepieces, including a small chest owned by Ginsburg and Levy, Inc., and the desk and bookcase illustrated in figure 83.

144. At this date, there is only one known example of American bombé furniture that probably originated from outside the Boston area, a bombé dressing table probably from New Hampshire. See Samuel Chamberlain, Salem Interiors: Two Centuries of New England Taste and Decoration (New York, 1950), p. 37.

145. Quoted in Survey of London: Spitalfields and Mile End New Town, xxvii (London, 1957) 293. Courtesy of Mr. Benno M. Forman.

146. Mabel M. Swan, “Furnituremakers of Charlestown,” Antiques, xlvi (October, 1944), 203–204.

147. Desmond Fitz-Gerald, Georgian Furniture (London, 1969), fig. 11.

148. Chippendale also imported French furniture; Edward Joy in an article in Country Life, cx (August, 1951), 569, draws attention to Chippendale’s attempt to avoid the English customs.

149. The London cabinetmaker Samuel Bennett labelled a bombé desk and bookcase (c. 1720) that is illustrated in Percy Macquoid and Ralph Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, 2nd ed., rev., 3 vols. (London, 1954), i, 136.

150. Suffolk County Registry of Probate, Boston, Massachusetts, docket 11871 (hereafter Suffolk Probate Records).

151. Quoted in James H. Stark, The Loyalists of Massachusetts (Boston, 1910), p. 352.

152. Joseph W. P. Frost, “Living with Antiques, Pepperrell Mansion, Kittery Point, Maine,” Antiques, lxxxix (March, 1966), 370.

153. Abbott Lowell Cummings, “The Foster-Hutchinson House,” Old-Time New England, liv (Winter, 1964), 59–76.

154. World Furniture, ed. Helena Hayward (London, 1965), p. 167.

155. Hans Huth, “Roentgens—Cabinet-Makers,” The Connoisseur, xcii (August, 1933), 85–91.

156. For an illustration of the Cade brand, see American Antiques from Israel Sack Collection, 3 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1969), ii, 340. “G. CADE” may refer to George Cade (1739–1789), a Boston ropemaker, or to his son, George Cade, Jr. (before 1769–1805), also a local ropemaker. The younger Cade’s inventory included “1 Old Desk” valued at $2.00. If, in fact, Cade did own the bombé desk, then it probably passed to the Plympton family soon after his death in 1805. An inscription on the desk reads, “Augusta P. Plympton, Decr[?] 27 1830 / Formerly property of Dr. Plympton, Waban.” For further information on the Cade and Plympton families, see Suffolk Probate Records, dockets 19402, 22390; A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, Containing the Statistics of the United States’ Direct Tax of 1798, As Assessed in Boston, xxii (Boston, 1892), 72, 306, 482; John Adams Vinton, The Richardson Memorial (Portland, Maine, 1876), p. 272.

157. Quoted in Anthony Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture (New York, 1968), p. 23.

158. The IId. Edition of Genteel Household Furniture in the Present Taste with an Addition of Several Articles Never Before Executed (London, n.d.), plates xliv, xlv, lxxxviii.

159. Mario Praz, An Illustrated History of Furnishing (New York, 1964), p. 105, fig. 64.

160. For photographs of the bas-relief in the Salon de la Guerre, see André Pératé, Versailles: Le Château, Les Jardins, Les Trianons, Le Musée, La Ville (Paris, 1905), pp. 39, 41; Key Monuments of the History of Architecture, ed. Henry A. Millon (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and New York, 1964), p. 402.

161. Pierre Verlet, French Royal Furniture (London, 1963), p. 8.

162. Other examples are owned by John Walton, Inc., New York, and the Sargent-Murray-Gilman-Hough House, Gloucester, Massachusetts. See also Wallace Nutting, Furniture Treasury (1928; rpt. New York, 1954) figs. 3206, 3210.

163. Ethel Hall Bjerkoe, The Cabinetmakers of America (Garden City, New York, 1957), p. 49.

164. Mabel M. Swan, “Boston’s Carvers and Joiners, Part ii, Post-Revolutionary,” Antiques, liii (April, 1948), 281–285; Richard H. Randall, Jr., “George Bright, Cabinetmaker,” The Art Quarterly, xxvii (1964), 134–149.

165. M. Ada Young, “Five Secretaries and the Cogswells,” Antiques, lxxxviii (October, 1965), 484–485.

166. Joseph Downs, “John Cogswell, Cabinetmaker,” Antiques, lxi (April, 1952), 324.

167. Two heavily restored secretaries with structural features similar to the Cogswell casepieces are now in the Winterthur Museum. Both secretaries have unusual upper sections, much different in appearance from the documented Cogswell chest. However, the structural similarities in the desk sections suggest attributions to Cogswell. See figure 135 and Joseph Downs, American Furniture, Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods in the Henry Francis du Font Winterthur Museum (New York, 1952), no. 227.

168. The Gay family desk and bookcase (fig. 131), attributed to Gibbs Atkins, has slanted drawer sides; the overlapping drawer front is cut to follow the contour of the sides of the case.

169. Both secretaries also have a strong relationship with the desk and bookcase made by George Bright. Until the history of both Atkins’ and B right’s apprenticeships and their respective cabinetshops is determined, I am attributing the Gay and Atkins family desks to Gibbs Atkins.

170. Mabel M. Swan, “Furniture of the Boston Tories,” Antiques, xli (March, 1942), 187.

171. Stark, Loyalists, p. 323.

172. Another bombé desk and bookcase at the Metropolitan Museum also has a tradition of being owned by William Greenleaf. However, Greenleaf’s inventory (Bristol County Registry of Probate, Taunton, Massachusetts, xl, 173) lists only one desk and bookcase (valued at $53). The Metropolitan’s desk has no proven family history, though an extraneous letter in their files mentions that a desk was owned by William Greenleaf and lent to George Washington when he resided at the Vassall-Longfellow House in Cambridge (Daniel Greenleaf to William Pope, Quincy, Massachusetts, July 1, 1838 [American Wing, Metropolitan Museum of Art]). Since the desk and bookcase at the Whaling Museum has a documented history through the Greenleaf family and since the Metropolitan’s letter of documentation is not tied directly to its desk, I feel that the Whaling Museum’s desk was probably the one owned by William Greenleaf.

173. A partial view of the desk and bookcase appears in an 1880s photograph of the left parlor of the Josiah Quincy House, Quincy, Massachusetts, on file in the library of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, Boston, Massachusetts.

174. Sack, Fine Points, p. 161, bottom.

175. Antiques, lxiii (May, 1953), 385. Another Massachusetts bombé tea caddy made of mahogany and white pine is illustrated in Israel Sack, Inc., Opportunities in American Antiques, xxii (November, 1972), 43.

176. Benno M. Forman, “Salem Tradesmen and Craftsmen Circa 1762: A Contemporary Document,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, cvii (January, 1971), 81.

177. Rust was working in Salem from 1762, removed to Boston by 1773, and was located in Beverly in 1782. He later returned to Salem where he died about 1800. Henry Wyckoff Belknap, Artists and Craftsmen of Essex County, Massachusetts (Salem, 1927), p. 68; Forman, “Salem Tradesmen and Craftsmen,” p. 65.

178. Rust’s only dated piece of furniture is a desk which bears the inscription: “This desk Made By Henry Rust of Salem / Salem, New England / One Thousand seven Hundred and Seventy.” Sack, Opportunities, xxii (November, 1972), 28–29.

179. See also a desk illustrated by Ginsburg and Levy, Inc., Antiques, xlvi (November, 1944), 255.

180. Quoted in Richard H. Randall, Jr., “George Bright, Cabinetmaker,” The Art Quarterly, xxvii (1964), 136, 138.

181. For an illustration of the serpentine-front bombé chest, see Edwin J. Hipkiss, Eighteenth-Century American Arts, The M. and M. Karolik Collection (Cambridge, 1941), fig. 35.

182. Joseph Downs, American Furniture, Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods in the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum (New York, 1952), no. 55.

183. See also F. Lewis Hinckley, Directory of the Historic Cabinet Woods (New York, 1960), pp. 120, 133.

184. Mabel M. Swan, “Boston’s Carvers and Joiners, Part i, Pre-Revolutionary,” Antiques, liii (March, 1948), 198.

185. Suffolk County Registry of Deeds, Boston, Massachusetts, xlvii, 196 (hereafter Suffolk Deeds).

186. Swan, “Boston’s Carvers and Joiners, Part i,” p. 198.

187. Suffolk Deeds, lviii, 4–6; lxvi, 194–195.

188. Quoted in Swan, “Boston’s Carvers and Joiners, Part i,” p. 199.

189. Ibid.; The Boston News-Letter, April 20, 1758; The Boston Gazette, April 24, 1758.

190. Suffolk County Registry of Probate, Boston, Massachusetts, docket 19253 (hereafter Suffolk Probate Records).

191. Ibid.

192. The Boston News-Letter, April 20, 1758; The Boston Gazette, April 24, 1758.

193. Suffolk Deeds, cxxvi, 121.

194. “Assessors’ ‘Taking Books’ of the Town of Boston, 1780,” The Bostonian Society, Publications, ix (1912), 33.

195. A Volume of Records Relating to the Early History of Boston Containing Miscellaneous Papers, xxix (Boston, 1900), 16–17.

196. Swan, “Boston’s Carvers and Joiners, Part i,” p. 199.

197. Suffolk Probate Records, docket 23075.

198. Leroy L. Thwing, “The Four Carving Skillins,” Antiques, xxxiii (June, 1938), 327.

199. Suffolk Deeds, xxxiv, 112–113.

200. Suffolk Probate Records, docket 9826.

201. Suffolk Probate Records, docket 9902.

202. A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, Containing the Boston Town Records, 1770 through 1777, xviii (Boston, 1887), 276–277.

203. “Assessors’ ‘Taking Books’,” p. 25.

204. Mabel M. Swan, “Major Benjamin Frothingham, Cabinetmaker,” Antiques, lxii (November, 1952), 392–395.

205. A summary of Frothingham’s military exploits and the earliest notes on his life are found in Dexter Edwin Spalding, “Benjamin Frothingham of Charlestown, Cabinetmaker and Soldier,” Antiques, xiv (December, 1928), 536–537. Frothingham’s certificate of membership in the Society of the Cincinnati, signed by George Washington and Henry Knox and dated May 5, 1784, has survived and is presently owned by Ginsburg and Levy, Inc., New York.

206. Clement E. Conger and Jane W. Pool, “Americana in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the Department of State, Washington, D.C.,” The Connoisseur, clxxiv (July, 1970), 220, figs. 7, 8.

207. I would like to acknowledge the great help of Albert Sack in acquiring photographs and information for this paper. His many years of observing details in furniture related to Frothingham have been of signal help, as has the firm’s photograph collection.

208. Helen Comstock, “Frothingham and the Question of Attributions,” Antiques, lxiii (June, 1953), 502, fig. 3 showing signature; see also Charles F. Hummel, “Queen Anne and Chippendale Furniture in the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Part iii,” Antiques, xcix (January, 1971), 98–101.

209. Joseph Downs, American Furniture, Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods in the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum (New York, 1952), no. 349.

210. Swan, “Major Benjamin Frothingham,” p. 393.

211. Ibid.

212. Ibid., p. 392.

213. The information and photographs were kindly supplied by Clement Conger, Chairman of the Fine Arts Committee, the Department of State, Washington, D.C.

214. Two Spragues are known to have worked in the cabinet business in Boston at later dates, one of whom, Holmes Sprague, is recorded as working after the Revolution. See Mabel M. Swan, “Boston’s Carvers and Joiners, Part ii, Post-Revolutionary,” Antiques, liii (April, 1948), 285.

215. This desk was sold in the Philip Flayderman sale of January 2–4, 1930. See The Collection of the Late Philip Flayderman (New York, 1930), lot 418.

216. Ethel Hall Bjerkoe, The Cabinetmakers of America (Garden City, New York, 1957), plate xviii, no. 2.

217. Wallace Nutting, Furniture Treasury (1928; rpt. New York, 1954), figs. 718, 719.

218. Helen Comstock, American Furniture (New York, 1962), fig. 304.

219. The interior is shown by Spalding, “Frothingham,” p. 537, fig. 3.

220. Richard H. Randall, Jr., American Furniture in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, 1965), fig. 64d.

221. Swan, “Major Benjamin Frothingham,” p. 395.

222. For illustrations of the chest and label, see Margaret Rose Ingate, “History in Towns: Mobile, Alabama,” Antiques, lxxxv (March, 1964), 309. For illustrations of the Walter Frothingham chest, see Comstock, “Frothingham and the Question of Attributions” p. 505, figs. 13, 14.

223. Antiques, Lxii (November, 1952), frontispiece. This type of richly carved fan exists in a number of Boston examples including the Hancock dressing table, now in the John Hancock Insurance Company Collection (Albert Sack, Fine Points of Furniture: Early American [New York, 1950], p. 198, bottom); a pad-foot high chest now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Luke Vincent Lockwood, Colonial Furniture in America, 3rd ed., 2 vols. [New York, 1926], i, 97, fig. 94); and a blockfront chest-on-chest (Lockwood, Colonial Furniture, i, 360, fig. xxvii); all perhaps by the same carver.

224. Swan, “Major Benjamin Frothingham,” p. 394 showing inscription.

225. Randall, American Furniture, p. 239.

226. Flayderman, lot 417.

227. Bjerkoe, Cabinetmakers, plate xvii, no. 2.

228. The information was kindly supplied by Barry Greenlaw, Curator of Furniture at Colonial Williamsburg. For further information and illustrations, see Barry Greenlaw, New England Furniture at Colonial Williamsburg (Williamsburg, 1974), no. 98.

229. Swan, “Major Benjamin Frothingham,” p. 395.

230. General Henry Knox to Benjamin Frothingham, Charlestown, January 16, 1797, Henry Knox Papers (Maine Historical Society). Courtesy of Earle Shettleworth.

231. Quoted in Swan, “Major Benjamin Frothingham,” p. 394.

232. Quoted in Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston, 3rd ed. (Boston, 1891), pp. 40–41.

233. Suffolk County Registry of Probate, Boston, Massachusetts, docket 20668.

234. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1961), ii, 114.

235. A vendue announcement appears in The Boston Gazette, November 21–28, 1737; an advertisement by the merchant Nathaniel Cunningham appears in The Boston Evening-Post, September 6, 1742.

236. William Douglass, A Summary, Historical and Political, of the First Planting, Progressive Improvements, and Present State of the British Settlements in North-America, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London, 1755), ii, 61.

237. Documents and Correspondence in the Boston Public Library Concerning the Boston Fire of 1760, part ii, document 29 (microfilm copy, Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum Libraries, Joseph Downs Manuscript Collection).

238. Adams Diary, ed. Butterfield, i, 228. See also Douglass, A Summary, ii, 66.

239. George B. Emerson, A Report on the Trees and Shrubs Growing Naturally in the Forests of Massachusetts (Boston, 1846), p. 60.

240. Benno M. Forman, “Mill Sawing in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts,” Old-Time New England, lx (Spring, 1970), 118–120.

241. Douglass, A Summary, ii, 54.

* Spruce wood, though little used in the construction of furniture, has long been a favorite in the making of musical instruments, especially sounding boards, for it has exceptional resonance. All of these trees ranged through all of the New England states.