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Photo: Courtesy Historic New England, 1991.1292
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High chest of drawers

Object number

RIF2451

Maker

Maker Unknown

Dimensions

61 1/4 × 40 × 22 3/4 in. (155.575 × 101.6 × 57.785 cm)

Date

1690–1710

Current location

Historic New England (www.historicnewengland.com), formerly Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities

Geography

Possibly made in Rhode Island, Owned in Westport, Massachusetts
(view a map of Rhode Island)

Medium

Maple, maple veneer (primary, on frame); pine (secondary, top and sides of drawers, bottom underneath, back)

Inscriptions

"Bought from Mrs. Joseph / Howland, Westport, Mass (92 years old) Highboy / descended in her hus- / band's family.," typed by Nina Fletcher Little, on jelly label on inside left of bottom chest drawer; "Howland," in chalk, on a drawer in lower case

Style

William and Mary

Provenance

By descent in the family of Joseph Howland, Westport, Massachusetts; by descent to Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Howland, Westport; sold by Mrs. Joseph Howland to Roland B. Hammond, North Andover, Massachusetts, 1956; sold to Nina Fletcher Little (1903–1993), Brookline, Massachusetts; bequeathed by Nina Fletcher Little (1903–1993) and her husband, Bertram K. Little (1899–1993), to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England), Boston, 1991

Associated names

Howland Family
Mrs. Joseph Howland
Nina Fletcher Little
Bertram K. Little

Notes

Southeast chamber 03/04/97

Bibliography

Alice Winchester, "Living with Antiques: Cogswell's Grant, the Essex County Home of Mr. and Mrs. Bertram K. Little," Antiques 95, no. 2 (February 1969): 251, ill.
Nina Fletcher Little, Little by Little: Six Decades of Collecting American Decorative Arts (Boston: Historic New England (www.historicnewengland.com), formerly Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1998), 193, fig. 254.
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), 172–173, 174n2, fig. 2.