Blanket chest

Date1680-1730

MediumBlack walnut; yellow pine, and oak.

DimensionsOH: 23 1/2"; OW: 29 1/4"; OD: 13 1/2"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1967-96

DescriptionAppearance: Six board chest with simply beaded top, pintle-joined to round-ended cleats on underside; plain black walnut front boards; ogee-over-flat molding around front and sides of case bottom; sides cut out on bottom in the shape of a stepped arch to form feet.

Construction: The top board, which includes an original one-inch extension wrought-nailed along the rear edge, has a separate cleat nailed to the underside at either end. Both of the cleats are drilled at the rear to receive the pintled ends of a stick nailed to the inside of the case at the top of the back. The front edge of the lid is scratch beaded rather than shaped with a conventional hand plane. Both the back and front boards are flush-nailed to the case sides, which are shaped at the bottom to form the feet. The bottom board is held inside the case with wrought nails that are covered at the front and sides by wrought-nailed moldings.

Materials: Black walnut front; yellow pine sides, back, bottom, lid, and right cleat; oak left cleat and pintle stick.
Label TextThe southern six-board chest shown here is one of several early variations of the form. This very basic design can be traced to late-Renaissance Europe. The carcass is nailed together and the feet are downward extensions of the side panels. At first glance, this object appears to be devoid of ornament, but a close examination reveals subtle decorative features. Most of the chest is made of plentiful, inexpensive, and unpainted yellow pine, but the two-piece front is of black walnut, a more costly material. A similar mixture of timbers appears on coeval British chests. The present example is also embellished with scratch beading on the lid and a finely executed molding at the bottom edge of the case. These elements, which have little impact on the object's utility, instead represent a conscious, albeit modest, artistic expression.

Six-board chests were also produced in New England during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Most are more extensively decorated than southern models. Because of the contrast in levels of ornament, plain southern chests are now often viewed as utilitarian objects, while their more elaborate northern counterparts are imbued with greater symbolic or functional significance. However, no evidence suggests that carved and painted chests were used differently from more modest forms.

The southern attribution of this chest is based on its execution in typical southern woods and its discovery in Brunswick County, Virginia, on the North Carolina border. The interior of the chest was once lined with March and April 1849 issues of The Southern Planter, a popular regional magazine. While no directly related examples are known, a number of similarly built North Carolina chests have been identified, among them a yellow pine model that descended in a Chowan County family (MESDA research file 12,172). Production in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century is suggested by the minimal tool kit used to build the chest. Physical evidence indicates the use of only four tools--a saw, a plane, an adze, and a hammer.

InscribedInterior lined with pages from the March and April 1847 issues of THE SOUTHERN PLANTER, a magazine that circulated widely in the South.
MarkingsNone.
ProvenanceCWF purchased the chest in 1967 from Williamsburg antiques dealer William Bozarth, who reported having found it in Brunswick Co., Va.