NORTHERN ESSEX COUNTY, PROBABLY IPSWICH OR NEWBURY, MASSACHUSETTS, DATED 1699

Displaying large, classically inspired applied turnings, this chest with drawer illustrates the craftsmanship of a highly sophisticated shop that operated in the late seventeenth century and first years of the eighteenth century in Northern Essex County, Massachusetts. A dated 1693 chest at the Wadsworth Atheneum (acc. no. 1926.308) is a close parallel to that offered here with applied ornament of the same design including the paired slender forms on each front panel. Two other examples display similar turnings on the stiles and muntins and like the chest offered here, have an applied molding on the base rail (one inscribed and dated IP/1701 at the Hoxie House, Sandwich, Massachusetts and the other sold, Sotheby's, New York, The Collection of Anne H. & Frederick Vogel III, 19 January 2019, lot 1073). The shop responsible for this chest made some of the most revered forms from seventeenth-century America, such as the Staniford-Heard chest-of-drawers at Winterthur Museum (acc. no. 1957.541) and several exuberant court cupboards. For more on this important group, see Robert F. Trent, Peter Follansbee and Alan Miller, "First Flowers of the Wilderness: Mannerist Furniture from a Northern Essex County, Massachusetts, Shop," American Furniture 2001, Luke Beckerdite, ed. (Milwaukee, 2001), pp. 1-64.