American and English Furniture

A fine American
Chippendale Mahogany
Desk and Bookcase
New England origin, probably Massachusetts, Circa 1780-1800

Serpentine front with an unusual cupboard bookcase top; the interior completely fitted out with eleven small drawers, three with carved shells and two hidden document drawers; a robust carved shell on the apron and ogee bracket feet.

The desk is made of the finest Santo Domingo Mahogany and Northeastern Pine secondary woods and has the original brasses.

Measurements: 42 inches wide, 25 1/2 inches deep, 58 1/2 inches high.

 Ex-Collection: Emily Crane Chadburne, ART INSTITUTE of CHICAGO.

There are only two other known examples of this form with a short cupboard bookcase top:

A Chippendale straight front example with straight bracket feet and a smaller shell on the apron and an identical cupboard bookcase top has been in the permanent collection at Colonial Williamsburg since the 1930's. (Left)
 Photo Courtesy Colonial Williamsburg

A watercolor (right) by Joseph Warren Leavitt, INTERIOR OF MOSES MORSE HOUSE, Loudon, New Hampshire, Circa 1824 shows a similar form. (Moses Morse was a cabinetmaker.)
Ex-collection: Bertram K. and Nina Fletcher Little.

Chippendale Maple Chest-on-Chest
Attributed to Goddard-Townsend School
Newport, Rhode Island. Circa 1780-1800.

Few maple chests are of this quality and desirable small size.

With its near perfect proportions, the chest is attributed to the workshop of Thomas Goddard. It is interesting to note that this chest is signed in chalk, "Cornelius Allen, Barnstable". There is an identical chest-on-chest made of mahogany in a prominent Boston collection which bears this same inscription by this unrecorded cabinetmaker.

Speculation is that Cornelius Allen was the son-in-law of Thomas Goddard. Thomas had a daughter that married an Allen. About 1846, Thomas Goddard made two doll chairs for his granddaughter, Matilda Allen, who later married John O. Peckham. These two small chairs descended in the Peckham family and are now owned by The Newport Historical Society.

Original brasses. No major restoration. Measurements: 7 ft. 1 in. High: 39 in. Wide; 19 in. Deep.









A very early Georgian Walnut MINIATURE Chest of Drawers
Circa 1720, in the William and Mary taste
 Quarter-sawed walnut veeners over pine with light wood inlays.
The drawers have oak secondary woods. 13 in. high; 13 in. wide; 8 1/4 in. deep.
Please note that there is restoration. Miniatures of this early style are rare.

 

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