Delaware Antiques Show 2025

An American Story: Interpreting Regionality in an East Tennessee Desk Eleanor Shippen, Lois F. McNeil Fellow Since its 1957 bequest by Henry Francis du Pont, a striking fall-front desk, made in 1808 and embellished with polychrome inlay in a rich walnut case, has prompted much scholarly interest (fig. 1). Its distinctive construction features and decoration have led furniture historians to assign a range of geographic attributions. Originally thought to have been made in Western Pennsylvania, more recently, scholars have shifted its probable origin further south and west on the Great Wagon Road—a vital artery of commerce and migration in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries stretching from Philadelphia into the southeastern United States. Currently attributed to Washington County, Tennessee, the desk now stands as one of the few objects in the Winterthur collection made in that state, opening new avenues for interpreting not only this enigmatic piece, but also the material culture landscape of the Southern backcountry in the Early Republic. Lowering the fall board reveals an intricately inlaid prospect door inscribed with the date 1808, twelve years after Tennessee joined the Union as the sixteenth state in 1796. East Tennessee, one of the state’s three geographic ‘grand divisions,’ experienced heightened migration in the mid-eighteenth century. This desk demonstrates the subsequent amalgamation of the region’s English, Scots- Irish, and German settlers. Important to consider too, but perhaps less overt, are probable contributions from both free and enslaved Black community members and craftspeople. The desk’s design, from its molded fall board to its five graduated case drawers, prospect with central compartment, document drawers, and pigeonholes, was informed by these communities’ techniques and design inspirations. The decoration reflects converging craft traditions. Apprentices, journeyman, and immigrants moved from Philadelphia and its hinterlands to southeastern counties in Maryland, Virginia, and Tennessee at the head of the Great Wagon Road, where a Pennsylvania German presence emerged in the mid-1700s. Following Fig. 1. Desk, Washington County, Tennessee, 1808. Bequest of Henry Francis du Pont 1957.1099 — 12 —