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Chest of drawers. Red oak with white pine and poplar secondary wood. Four drawers with two-paneled drawer fronts and heavy molding. Two-paneled sides Heavy basal and top moldings. Each drawer contains an incised number for identification. Rests on heavy ball feet.
chests of drawers
case furniture
poplar (wood)
red oak (wood)
Norway spruce (wood)
Chest Of Drawers
The chests of drawers in which seventeenth-century Massachusetts colonists placed their cherished textiles did not often display drawers of equal height like the ones on this Middlesex County example, produced about 1665-1685. The broad channel moldings that adorn the drawer dividers on the chest's façade and side rails also make the piece exceptionally rare. Another unusual feature lies within the chest's drawers. The craftsman used a chisel to incise numbers into the fronts and sides of each drawer. Such identification eased the process of assembly, because the fronts and sides marked with the same number identified them as parts that matched to form an individual drawer. In both style and construction, the shop that produced this piece revealed a distinctive style.
Unknown
MA
36 7/8 x 44 5/16 x 21 1/2 (HxWxD) (inches)
Museum Purchase
1949.85
Jobe, Brock and Myrna Kaye. New England Furniture: The Colonial Era. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984.
Middlesex county (Massachusetts) [county]
Possibly Cambridge (Middlesex county, Massachusetts)
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