Chest. Red oak. Five-panel front and two-panel sides. Molded stiles and rails painted black. Lower rail has serrated chip carving. Interior contains a till.
chests (case furniture)
case furniture
red oak (wood)
cedar (wood)
eastern white pine (wood)
Chest
Chest
Textiles encompassed some of the most valuable possessions of seventeenth-century New Englanders. This lockable chest kept sheets and tablecloths secure. Produced about 1680-1700 in the Scituate-Marshfield area, it is made of native red oak and white pine. Extant inventories refer to such a chest as a joyned, or joined, chest because its craftsman, called a joiner, constructed the piece with rectangular mortise and tenon joints. Much of the furniture in seventeenth century Anglo-America was produced by joiners. The chest's five panels along the front, instead of the more common three or four, suggests the joiner was limited by the width of the wood he had on hand. The carved serrated pattern of inverted triangles on the lower front rail of the chest links it to similarly carved furniture made in the affluent North River towns of Marshfield and Scituate.
In exhibit "Boxes: Open and Shut" at SPNEA's One Bowdoin Square Gallery May 15, 2001 to October 2001. The exhibit then traveled to Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, MA where objects were on display from November 2001 to May 6, 2002. Loaned to Fitchburg Art Museum, Sept 2003- Feb 2004, for exhibition "Picturing Our Past: Frontier Challenges 1600-1720."
Unknown
MA
27 5/8 x 52 3/4 x 20 5/8 (HxWxD) (inches)
In memory of Chauncey C. Nash
1971.372
Massachusetts (United States)
Scituate (Plymouth County, Massachusetts)
Marshfield (Plymouth County, Massachusetts)
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