image of object
Photo: Courtesy CRN Auctions, Inc., Cambridge, Mass.
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High chest of drawers, lower case only

Object number

RIF5739

Maker

Maker Unknown
Maker, possibly by Christopher Townsend, 1701?1787

Dimensions

37 1/2 × 38 × 20 in. (95.25 × 96.52 × 50.8 cm)

Date

1755–65

Current location

Unknown

Geography

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

Medium

Mahogany (primary); pine (secondary)

Marks

Unknown

Inscriptions

Unknown

Style

Chippendale

Provenance

CRN Auctions, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts, September 9, 2012, lot 107

Associated names

CRN Auctions, Inc.

Construction

The single-board scallop-skirted case sides meet the single-board case back in dovetail joints having short, thick-necked pins with half-pins above and below. The backboard?s skirt is straight, with ogee profiles at its extremities. The inside of the proper left case side is reinforced with three large, scallop-skirted blocks. The single-board lower-drawer bottoms are perpendicular to their fronts and full-width, fixed to their drawer sides with brads and to their drawer backs with rosehead nails. The lower-drawer supports are set into grooves in the backboard, as are the guides between the drawers. The guides are set into grooves in vertical blocks behind the skirt board. The blocks are rectilinear, with slightly rounded outside corners. The legs are of the ?detachable? sort, held in with vertical chamfered glueblocks (some reinforced with rosehead nails), and square-sectioned, with angular knees and ankles and finely carved claws and undercut talons grasping ball feet. In the center of the skirt?s carved shell is a scrolling trefoil motif. Photographs courtesy of CRN Auctions, Cambridge, Mass., and Erik Gronning; notes compiled by T. B. Lloyd.

Bibliography

"CRN Antiques, Inc., advertisement," Antiques and the Arts Weekly (August 31, 2012): 92.
"CRN Auctions, Inc., September 9, 2012," http://www.crnauctions.com (accessed July 1, 2013).