55th Annual Delaware Show

A mere shadow, faintly visible in raking light, is all that remains of the script that once spelled “Philadelphia” on the drawer front of Winterthur’s recently acquired double cabinet (fig. 1). This drawer may be blank, but gold painted letters still adorn the cabinet’s eleven other drawers. Labeled to the left of Philadelphia is the name of the winemaking island of Madeira; to the right is Jamaica; “Teneriffe,” one of Spain’s seven Canary Islands, can be found painted on the drawer below; and names of other prominent eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ports and colonies fill out the mix. All taken into consideration, it became clear to Josh Lane, Winterthur’s curator of furniture, that the cabinet he was examining at the 2016 Delaware Antiques Show was a remarkable document of Atlantic world history. Purchased by Winterthur, the object offered a unique opportunity for study and soon became the focus of the first student-curated exhibition in the Society of Winterthur Fellows Gallery. Thanks to months of research by the students, aided by scholars across the country, the cabinet is now one of Winterthur’s primary references on the transatlantic slave trade. The use of island mahogany and English oak situate the piece in the world of Atlantic commerce, but its most compelling story is revealed when its locks are turned and doors are opened. Drawers labeled with the names of ports and colonies (fig. 2) reconstruct networks of trade: Senegambia, Madeira, Jamaica, Leeward Islands, North Carolina, Waterford, Bristol, Teneriffe, Gold Coast, and Philadelphia, revealing participation in the transatlantic trade between Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and North America that transported shiploads of commodities and captive people during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Fig. 2. Interior drawers with gold painted lettering. — 144 —