- High Chest of Drawers
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Period sources document a remarkably brisk transfer of design between urban and rural America. By the 1730s, within a decade of the Late Baroque’s earliest appearance in Boston, household inventories in Wethersfield, Connecticut, list furniture forms revealing the style’s introduction there. The design of both the Bayou Bend high chest and a related tea table in the collection (see B.69.349) were clearly inspired by the Boston-Salem aesthetic. By the 1750s, when Wethersfield cabinetmakers began producing high chests with “crown tops,” the enclosed bonnet that is uniquely American, the style’s integration was complete.
Technical notes: Cherry; eastern white pine (some drawer bottoms, moldings, bonnet, backboards), southern yellow pine (some drawer bottoms). The high chest is constructed in a conventional manner. Below the top sequence of drawers is a full dustboard; the remainder of the drawers are separated by dividers.
Related examples: Antiques 71 (May 1957), p. 410; Kirk 1970, p. 27, no. 14; Antiques and The Arts Weekly, May 29, 1987, p. 42; Ward 1988, pp. 275–76, no. 144.
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.
ProvenanceBy tradition, owned by Dr. Ezekiel Porter (1705–1775), Wethersfield, Connecticut, or his son-in-law and daughter, Colonel Thomas Belden (1732–1782) and Abigail Belden [1]; […] ; [Ginsburg & Levy, New York]; purchased by Miss Ima Hogg, 1928; given to MFAH, by 1966.
[1] The high chest cannot be identified in either Dr. Ezekiel Porter’s inventory or that of his son-in-law, Colonel Thomas Belden, and may have entered the family through another member.
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