Box

Details

Descriptive Terms

boxes (containers)
red oak (wood)
eastern white pine (wood)
Box

Label

Two carved floral lunettes decorate the façade of this riven oak and sawn white pine six-board box produced about 1670-1690. Immigrant joiners brought the floral lunette, a popular motif in the furniture of Dorset and Norfolk, England, to New England. The decoration of boxes often mimicked that of larger furniture. The lunette motif also embellished several pieces of large case furniture from the Hingham-Scituate area. The decorative band of punchwork squares that surround the sides and top edge of the façade distinguish this box from its larger furniture counterparts. The box descended in the Briggs family of Scituate, Massachusetts.

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."
Highlights of the furniture collection: This small seventeenth-century box is notable for its decorative carving. The floral lunette was a popular English motif that immigrant craftsmen brought to the New World and can be found particularly in furniture made in and around New Haven, Connecticut, and Sciturate, Massachusetts. This example descended in the Briggs family of Scituate.

Maker

Unknown

Location of Origin

MA

Dimensions

9 1/2 x 25 1/2 x 15 15/16 (HxWxD) (inches)

Credit Line

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen H. Nash in memory of Chauncey C. Nash

Accession Number

1971.374

Places

Massachusetts (United States)
Hingham (Plymouth County, Massachusetts)
Scituate (Plymouth County, Massachusetts)