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Photo: Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The M. and M. Karolik Collection of Eighteenth-Century American Arts 39.156
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Desk and bookcase

Object number

RIF744

Maker

Maker Unknown

Dimensions

Height to top of pediment: 92 7/8 in. (235.903 cm) Height to eagle wing: 95 5/8 in. (242.888 cm) Width of desk: 44 3/8 in. (112.713 cm) Depth of desk: 22 in. (55.88 cm)

Date

1750–75

Current location

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Geography

Made in Massachusetts, formerly said to have been made in Newport, Rhode Island
(view a map of Rhode Island)

Medium

Mahogany (primary); chestnut, pine, and cherry (secondary)

Marks

Unknown

Inscriptions

Unknown

Style

Chippendale

Provenance

Colonel John Cooke (1744–1812), Middletown, Rhode Island; by descent to an unidentified individual, Tiverton, Rhode Island; sold to Martha Codman Karolik (1858–1948) and Maxim Karolik (1893–1963), Boston, Massachusetts, and Newport, Rhode Island; given to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1939

Associated names

Colonel John Cooke
Maxim Karolik
Martha Codman Karolik

Bibliography

Edwin J Hipkiss, Eighteenth-Century American Arts: The M. and M. Karolik Collection (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950), 34–35, no. 20, ill.