This diminutive high chest, while fully in the Late Baroque mode, evinces subtle changes from its Early Baroque predecessors. The facade is still covered with a figured veneer, but checkered banding now accentuates the drawer fronts. However, the principal stylistic development is discernible in the lower case; in place of the six turned legs are four cabriole supports, the turned pendants suggesting the center legs. The great central arch and undulating stretchers have also been eliminated, and the skirt rail is divided into three segments. The focus has shifted to the central drawer, with its inlaid, stylized Late Baroque shell. 

Technical notes: Soft maple, black walnut (bottom central  drawer, veneer on remaining drawers with unidentified contrasting checkered inlay); eastern white pine. The sides terminate with large dovetails extending beyond the drawer backs. Dividers separate the full-length drawers except for the top two, which are separated by a full dustboard. Two vertical braces are set in between the top drawers and  the case top. The top is dovetailed to the sides. A fragmentary label from an unidentified Boston company is attached. Two drawers are inscribed “Martha” and “E C Crow.”

Related examples: Nutting 1962, no. 400; Antiques 64 (September 1953), p. 149; Antiques 134 (September 1988), p. 379. Pedimented high chests with similar inlaid shell drawers are published in Downs 1952, no. 190; Antiques 70 (July 1956), p. 4; Antiques 125 (April 1984), p. 700

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1988.