Chest of drawers with prospect door

Date1790-1805

OriginAmerica, Virginia, Halifax County or Mecklenburg County

MediumBlack walnut and yellow pine.

DimensionsOH: 41 1/4" OW: 43" OD: 21 1/8"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1994-14

DescriptionAppearance: Straight-front chest with four tiers of drawers; top tier consists of central prospect door that conceals two pigeon holes and three small interior drawers; prospect is flanked by two deep drawers with fronts molded to look like two short drawers each; second, third, and fourth tiers comprise three full-width graduated drawers; all drawers have scratch-beaded edges; applied top and base moldings; four straight bracket feet.

Construction: The two-board top is half-blind-dovetailed to the case sides. The top molding is nailed to the front and side edges of the case, thus concealing the dovetails on the case sides. The bottom board is open-dovetailed to the case sides. Both top drawers are supplied with a kicker nailed to the underside of the top. The top drawers rest on a drawer blade backed by a full-depth dustboard, both resting in dadoes that are exposed on the rear edges of the case but stop just short of the front. The second and third drawers rest on drawer blades backed by drawer runners set into dadoes like those of the dustboard. The bottom drawer rests on a drawer blade and two drawer runners attached to the upper surface of the case bottom with countersunk wrought nails. Each drawer is stopped by two vertical blocks glued and wrought-nailed to the case back. The side panels for the prospect compartment rest in dadoes cut into the case top, and the adjacent drawer blade-dustboard assembly. The back of the prospect compartment is nailed to the rear edges of the prospect side panels. The dividers within the prospect compartment are dadoed into the side panels and the case top. The solid prospect door hangs on two butt hinges. The two-board lap-joined case back is rabbeted on the top and side edges, set into thin dadoes in the top board and case sides, and face-nailed to the rear edge of the bottom board with wrought nails. The base molding is face-nailed to the front and side edges of the case. The front bracket feet are joined with blind dovetails and are nailed to the base molding. The rear feet are joined with half-blind dovetails exposed on the rear. They are face-nailed to the base molding and the bottom edge of the case back. Each foot is backed by a chamfered horizontal block nailed to the bottom board and to a double-fluted vertical block that is nailed to the brackets.

The exterior drawers are dovetailed. Their bottom boards are beveled on the front and sides and set into dadoes. The rear edges of the bottom boards on the two top drawers are secured to the lower edges of the drawer backs with cut nails. Wooden pins attach the rear edges of the bottom boards on the full-width drawers. The interior drawers mimic the construction of the full-width exterior drawers except that their bottom panels are grained front to back and project beyond the drawer backs to act as drawer stops. The sides of the interior drawer fronts are flared in plan, a practice that made for easier final fitting of the drawer and its opening.

Materials: Black walnut case top and top molding, case sides, drawer blades, exterior and interior drawer fronts, prospect door, prospect compartment side panels, some prospect compartment interior dividers, base molding, exposed parts of bracket; all other components of yellow pine.

Label TextThis chest of drawers is highly unusual by American standards in that it features an exposed central prospect door akin to those commonly found within the writing compartments of desks and secretaries. As in those forms, the door on the chest can be locked and conceals a series of small interior drawers and pigeonholes. Flanking the prospect door is a pair of deep but narrow exterior drawers, each with a front panel molded to look like two separate shallow drawers. Unknown in other American chests of drawers from the late eighteenth century, this combination of features was quite popular with furniture buyers in the vicinity of Mecklenburg and Halifax counties, a rural district of small farms and large plantations situated in Virginia's southern Piedmont. To date, more than a dozen similar chests have been discovered, most with histories of ownership in or near Mecklenburg.

The production of this chest and its counterparts in a relatively isolated area is a good illustration of the way in which specific furniture-making traditions were transmitted to early America from Europe, especially from Great Britain. While published pattern books are the most obvious source, imported furniture and emigrating artisans probably had an even greater impact. In the case of the Mecklenburg chests, the design source likely was an artisan from East Anglia, that part of England defined by the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. Virtually identical chests with exterior prospect doors and flanking deep drawers were commonly made there but almost nowhere else. There is no evidence that furniture from East Anglia was imported to North America, but some cabinetmakers and related tradesmen did move from that part of England to eastern and central Virginia. Parker Hawkins, an upholsterer who plied his trade in Norwich as late as 1798, established a shop in Norfolk, Virginia, by 1801. A similar migration is likely responsible for the introduction of this rare East Anglian furniture form into the cabinetmaking vocabulary of rural Mecklenburg County, Virginia.

Although the maker of the CWF chest is unknown, the shop was evidently quite productive. Among the several objects that can be attributed to the same operation is a desk and bookcase of standard form first owned by Mecklenburg silversmith John Winckler (d. 1803) (MESDA acc. 2543). It bears many of the same idiosyncratic structural details found on the chest. Noteworthy among them are the form and construction of the bracket feet. In both cases, the bracket faces are dovetailed together and then nailed to the bottom of the base molding. A hollowed vertical block attached to the bracket assembly with three or four large nails and topped with a square horizontal block that is similarly nailed provides internal support.

"James Crow" is inscribed in chalk in an early hand on the bottom of a drawer from the Winckler desk. Although no one of that name appears in the records of Mecklenburg and surrounding counties, other members of the Crow family, including John Crow and his son William, resided in Mecklenburg during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Interestingly, a multigenerational family of furniture makers named Crow worked and lived in the East Anglian port city of Great Yarmouth from the 1770s until the middle of the nineteenth century. Among them were William Crow (w. 1776-1798), carver, gilder, chair maker, and cabinetmaker, and his son John (w. 1805-1840), a cabinetmaker and upholsterer.

InscribedNone
MarkingsNone
ProvenanceThe chest was owned for many years by a private collector in Goochland County, Virginia. It was sold by the collector in the early 1970s to antiques dealer Frank Dickinson, Swan Tavern, Yorktown, Virginia, and remained in his personal collection until his death in 1989. The chest was bequeathed to Dickinson's business partner, Paul Steed (d. 1993), from whose estate it was purchased in 1994.