Object Details
Object Essay
During the last quarter of the 18th century, Massachusetts cabinetmakers frequently adopted the oxbow facade for their finest case furniture, capping the contour with a sharp undulating outline in the top drawer and mounting ogee bracket feet to the base. Their bookcases usually had doors with serpentine panels and pitched pediments. This desk and bookcase conforms to the pattern but demonstrates the individuality that existed within it. Instead of standard dentil moldings in the pediment, pierced Gothic-arched fretwork fills the architrave and bands of connected ovals outline the cornice. In addition, the desk interior lacks the pilastered document drawers that often flank the prospect door, and the brackets of the feet display rounded spurs rather than the pronounced comma-like cusps found on many pieces of Massachusetts case furniture.
The construction of this desk and bookcase follows Boston-area practice, but like the design, it also exhibits distinctive variations. The waist molding is attached to the upper case instead of the lower case. The candle slides below the bookcase doors never had knobs. Most important, the pediment is a separate unit glued and nailed at the corners. To prevent the pediment from sliding, two vertical braces attached to the pediment’s back rail frame fit into dovetailed-shaped slots in the upper backboard of the bookcase.
Most of these features appear on two similar oxbow desk and bookcases with removable pitched pediments.1Both desk and bookcases are privately owned in eastern Massachusetts and have never been published. Two other examples are related in design to the unpublished objects and may have originated in the same shop. See Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, Sale 4268, June 20–23, 1979, Lot 1250; Christie’s, New York, Sale 6842, June 3 1989, Lot 17. The three pieces have identical desk interiors and three adjustable bookcase shelves. Each item remains in excellent condition but lacks its original finial.2The finial on the Collection’s desk and bookcase was copied by Robert Ferencsik, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities Conservation Lab, from an original example on a chest-on-chest at the Cape Ann Historical Association in Gloucester, Massachusetts. The author wishes to thank Martha Oaks, Curator, for that permission. Certainly a single maker constructed all three objects, possibly as late as 1805. Minor details of his workmanship reflect the increasing interest in delicacy in the Federal era.
Of the three related desk and bookcases, only the Department of State’s retains a history of ownership. Its provenance serves as the basis for attributing the group to the Boston area. In 1832, Elizabeth Amory Dexter Sohier of Boston presented it to John Bryant, a family friend and wealthy China Trade merchant. Mrs. Sohier may well have inherited the desk and bookcase from her father, Aaron Dexter, a Boston physician and Harvard professor who had died just three years earlier.
Brock Jobe
Excerpted from Clement E. Conger, et al. Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1991.