Bombé furniture was produced on the European continent as well as in England, with historical precedents for it dating back to ancient Rome. In colonial America its inspiration was derived from imported English furniture and design books, its production limited to the Boston area and neighboring Essex County. The earliest documented example is not a piece of domestic furniture but the majestic pulpit created in 1749 by Abraham Knowlton (died c. 1749) for the First Church of Ipswich. Four years later the Charlestown, Massachusetts, cabinetmaker Benjamin Frothingham (1734–1809) signed a monumental desk and bookcase, now recognized as the earliest documented piece of bombé furniture. The Bayou Bend desk is closely related in appearance, manifesting the earliest phase of the bombé in America.

Related examples: The Bayou Bend desk and bookcase is the only example with bombé construction among a sophisticated group of case pieces attributed to an unidentified Boston cabinetshop, the carving on some attributed to John Welch (1711–1789): Jobe 1991; Miller 1993. Most closely related is the Quincy block-front desk (Miller 1993, pp. 172–74). The Bayou Bend desk and bookcase is also reminiscent of two other desk and bookcases (Morse 1924, pp. 134–36) and to the well-known example by Benjamin Frothingham (Conger 1991, pp. 93–94, no. 13). The discovery of a block-front desk inscribed Boston cabinetmaker by Richard Walker (d. 1777) has associated his name with this body of furniture (Zimmerman and Levy 1995).

Book excerpt: Warren, David B., Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.