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Photo: Courtesy private collection
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Slant-front desk

Object number

RIF6508

Maker

Maker Joseph Rawson, Sr., 1760?1835

Dimensions

45 × 41 1/2 × 20 1/2 in. (114.3 × 105.41 × 52.07 cm)

Date

1785–1800

Current location

Private collection

Geography

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

Medium

Cherry (primary); pine (secondary)

Marks

"MADE / BY / Joseph Rawson, / PROVIDENCE," printed in black ink, on paper label glued to interior bottom of top exterior drawer

Style

Chippendale

Provenance

Walter Raymond Turner (1891–1975), Scituate, then Chepachet, then Greenville, then Riverside, and later Foster, Rhode Island; by descent to his daughter Mrs. Frederick Cottrell Clarke (née Dorothy Eaton Turner, 1930–2009), Jamestown, Rhode Island; thence by descent in her family

Associated names

Walter Raymond Turner
Dorothy Eaton Turner Clarke

Construction

The single-board top meets the case sides in dovetail joints having finely cut pins of slightly varying configuration. The case back consists of multiple vertical boards of widely varying width, fixed with cut nails into rabbets in the case top and sides. The boards are deeply chamfered at the top; the boards at the lateral extremities are deeply chamfered at the sides adjacent to the case sides. Photographs courtesy of a private collection.