AFA Summer 2019

Summer 100 www.afamag.com |  www.incollect.com Fig. 6: Bombé tall clock, Philadelphia, 1745–1765. Walnut with tulip poplar and hard pine. H. 88, W. 21, D. 11 in. Courtesy, Kelly Kinzle Antiques. 1947. Her forebears included prominent Biddles and descendants of Bishop William White (1748–1836) and Mayor Michael Keppele (1771–1821), all of Philadelphia. This object suggests a likely origin for another problematic blockfront chest of drawers long identified as Boston made (Fig. 4). Its uncertain Boston origin stems from secondary wood combinations, namely tulip poplar ( Liriodendron tulipifera ) drawer sides with white cedar drawer bottoms and backboards, as well as white cedar back and bottom boards of the case. The drawer bottoms run side-to-side, not front-to-back as usual in Philadelphia work, but they have applied running strips with prominent diagonal end-cuts, which are typical. White pine exists only as a few glue blocks. The predominance of tulip poplar and white cedar argues strongly for manufacture in the Philadelphia area. The combination of those woods is not encountered in Boston or New England—where white pine is the secondary wood of choice — nor in New York. A few construction details of this chest, particularly fabrication of the giant dovetail, which is built up by several strips of wood rather than cut from a solid board, differs enough from the desk and bookcase (and from New England prototypes) to suggest another maker, also unknown. Re-identification of these two blockfront examples paves the way for a third example. A prospect bureau table (popularly called a kneehole desk) recently came to light in the Philadelphia area (Fig. 5). 8 It too resembles Boston work but has Philadelphia secondary woods of white cedar and tulip poplar, as well as design and construction details suggestive of Philadelphia such as bracket-foot profiles with deep spurs, a deep overhang of the top in the back, and dovetailed drawers that meet in a miter at the top edges. As with blockfronts, bombé furniture has long been recognized as premier cabinetry of Boston, Salem, and nearby North Shore communities. This feature, which requires extra wood to fabricate, gives visual weight to the furniture carcass and sympathizes with the naturalism of rococo ornament that accompanies the better examples. The earliest documented example is a Boston desk and bookcase signed by Benjamin Frothingham in 1753. 9 Benjamin Frothingham, John Cogswell, and other Boston craftsmen continued to make the form through the end of the century. 10 Furniture historians have described two basic ways of making the bombé form. Thick side boards of the carcass were either cut to shape on the outside only, as on the early Frothingham desk, or the inside was also contoured to the curved shape, as in most other examples. A walnut, Philadelphia-made tall clock case, housing an unsigned eight-day brass movement and dial, employs a third type of construction (Figs. 6 and 7). The bombé form of the base was made by building out each side with pieces of wood to accommodate the curve. The unknown case maker first glued (i.e., laminated) a tapered board made of hard (or “yellow”) pine onto the tulip poplar side of the base section, then laminated another thick board of walnut on top of the pine board. He cut the bombé