image of object
From: Morrison H. Heckscher, John Townsend, Newport Cabinetmaker (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005), 161, cat. no. 39
Click the image to enlarge

Desk and bookcase

Object number

RIF1410

Maker

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

Dimensions

98 × 40 × 22 1/2 in. (248.921 × 101.6 × 57.15 cm)

Date

1760–70

Current location

Private Collection

Geography

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

Medium

Mahogany (primary); mahogany and yellow poplar (secondary)

Inscriptions

"A, B, C, D" in chalk on the outside backboards of large drawers, beginning at the top

Provenance

Jonathan Nichols (1700–1774), Newport, Rhode Island; by descent to his son Walter Nichols (1748–1823), Newport, Rhode Island; by descent to his son William Stoddard Nichols (1785–1871), Newport, Rhode Island; by descent to his son, Thomas Pitman Nicholas (1816–1897), Newport, Rhode Island; by descent to his son, Othniel Foster Nichols (1845–1908), Brooklyn; by descent to his grandson Foster Nichols Perry (1902–1989), Westerly, Rhode Island, and later Suffield, Connecticut; sold to Israel Sack, Inc., New York, 1972; sold to a private collection

Associated names

Jonathan Nichols
William Stoddard Nichols
Thomas Pitman Nichols
Israel Sack, Inc.
Othniel Foster Nichols
Foster Nichols Perry

See also

Bibliography

Morrison H. Heckscher, John Townsend: Newport Cabinetmaker, exh. cat. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005), 134–35, no. 29, ill.
Michael Moses, Master Craftsmen of Newport: The Townsends and Goddards (Tenafly, N.J.: MMI Americana Press, 1984), 173–174, fig. 3.96, 3.96a, 3.96b.
American Antiques from Israel Sack Collection, 10 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Highland House Publishers, 1957–89), vol. 4, pp. 915–17, no. P3555, ill.; vol. 8, p. 2145, ill.
"Israel Sack, Inc., advertisement," Antiques 102, no. 1 (July 1972): inside cover, ill.
Albert Sack, The New Fine Points of Furniture: Early American (New York: Crown Publishers, 1993), 167, Masterpiece, ill.