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Photo: Courtesy Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Bequest of Mr. Charles L. Pendleton, 04.042; photo by Erik Gould
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Desk and bookcase

Object number

RIF1233

Maker

Maker attributed John Goddard, American, 1723–1785

Dimensions

101 x 45 1/2 x 27 in. (256.541 x 115.57 x 68.58 cm)

Date

1760–70

Current location

Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design

Geography

Made in Newport, Rhode Island
(view a map of Rhode Island)

Medium

Mahogany (primary); cedar (interior of bookcase, back boards of bookcase, and linings of interior desk drawers); pine (pediment boards, back boards of desk, board under desk interior, backing of drawer dividers, linings of exterior drawers, brackets of rear feet, and original horizontal blocks of feet); maple (blocks on interior of lopers and bottom boards of desk); chestnut (vertical blocks of front feet)

Marks

None

Inscriptions

“1” through “4,” in chalk, on interior backs of proper-right interior desk drawers; “5” through “7,” in chalk, on interior backs of prospect drawers; “8” through “11,” in chalk, on interior backs of proper-left interior desk drawers; “I” and “IX,” incised, on tops of interior shell drawers; “1” through “6,” in chalk, on interior backs of valance drawers; “I” through “VI,” incised on top fronts of valance drawers; possible letter, in graphite, on exterior bottom of top exterior desk drawer; “B,” in chalk, on interior back of middle exterior desk drawer; illegible chalk, on interior back of lower exterior desk drawer; “A” and “B,” in graphite, on tops of dividers under top and middle exterior desk drawers; “Bottom,” in graphite, on exterior bottom of desk

Style

Chippendale

Provenance

Charles L. Pendleton (1846–1904), Providence, Rhode Island; bequeathed to Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, 1904

Associated names

Charles L. Pendleton

Notes

This example is one of nine Rhode Island blockfront desk and bookcases onamented with six shells.

See also

Bibliography

Luke Vincent Lockwood, The Pendleton Collection (Providence: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1904), 232-236, pl.56, 57, ill.
Luke Vincent Lockwood, Colonial Furniture in America, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926), vol. 1, pp. 250–253, fig. 274.
Hedy B. Landman, "The Pendleton House at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design," Antiques 107, no. 5 (May 1975): 936, ill.
Michael Moses, Master Craftsmen of Newport: The Townsends and Goddards (Tenafly, N.J.: MMI Americana Press, 1984), 316–317, no. 57, fig. 8.11, 8.11a–c.
Christopher P. Monkhouse and Thomas S. Michie, American Furniture in Pendleton House (Providence: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1986), 97–99, no. 40, ill.
Brock Jobe, "The Lisle Desk-and-Bookcase: A Rhode Island Icon," American Furniture (2001): 131–132, 144–145, fig. 15–17, 42–43, 45.
Patricia E. Kane et al., Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650–1830, exh. cat. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2016), 294n3, 300, 301nn1–2, 313n1, fig. 5.