image of object
From: Ott Joseph, "Some Rhode Island Furniture," The Magazine Antiques 107, no. 5 (May, 1975): 942, pl. 1.
Click the image to enlarge

Chest-on-chest

Object number

RIF1091

Maker

Maker, attributed to John Townsend, American, 1732/33–1809

Dimensions

83 × 42 1/2 × 20 1/2 in. (210.82 × 107.95 × 52.07 cm)

Date

1765–85

Current location

Unknown

Geography

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

Medium

Mahogany (primary); chestnut (secondary)

Marks

None

Inscriptions

Unknown

Provenance

Moses Brown (1738–1836), Providence, Rhode Island. Anna Babbitt, Wickford, Rhode Island, by 1926. Joseph K. Ott (1929–1994), Providence, by 1975

Associated names

Moses Brown
Anna Babbitt
Joseph K. Ott

Bibliography

Luke Vincent Lockwood, Colonial Furniture in America, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926), vol. 1, pp. 115–117, fig. 115.
Joseph K. Ott, "Some Rhode Island Furniture," Antiques 107, no. 5 (May 1975): 942, pl. I, ill.
Michael Moses, Master Craftsmen of Newport: The Townsends and Goddards (Tenafly, N.J.: MMI Americana Press, 1984), 75, 167, fig. 2.4, 3.91.
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), 58n20.