Prickett Desk 2011

scroll-pediment bookcase and round-arched doors.” 1 A counterpart, in the Bybee Collection at the Dallas Museum of Art, has been analyzed and described in extended scholarly detail by curator Charles Venable. 2 A third block-fronted example is at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College. 3 All four secretaries have so many identical features of design, construction, profiling, carving and minutiae of workmanship that their origin in a single cabinet- making shop is clear. The literally-carved scallop shells on the base, stylized shells on the bonnet angled slightly downward with wavy fluting, elongated knee brackets, beautifully blocked and stepped interior drawer format, and distinctive carved foot design have long been recognized by scholars as a unmistakable combination associated with Salem, Massachusetts. Similarities extend to base blocking, base and crown molding patterns, dramatic wood selection that harmonizes the door panels with the fall-board, the elegant proportions and arrangement of the facade of the bonnet, the use of plain fluted pilaster strips on bookcase doors and the striking design of the desk interiors, both above and below. In addition, the drawer and case dovetails have peculiarities strongly attributable to one hand. A larger group of case furniture almost certainly made in the same shop includes sophisticated examples of equal quality of both block-front and bombé design. Those identified to date include at least: a single bombé chest-on-chest, 4 four bombé desks, 5 five block-front desks, 6 three bombé chests of drawers, 7 and one bonnet-top highboy. 8 Furniture with full block-front shaping and construction was labor-intensive, complicated and much more expensive than plain shaping. An even more expensive choice was the bombé form. The principal problem revolves around how to make a bank of rectangular drawers fit inside a case with curved sides. The earliest solution adopted from English examples retained vertical inner case sides, and only the outer case sides described the bombé curve, allowing the large drawer sides to be vertical. Over time, cabinetmakers sought ways to make the visual line of the case and drawer sides all harmonious matching curves. An evolution of methods developed over time is evident in surviving examples, particularly in Boston examples where the form was much more popular than in Salem. One early method retained vertical inner case and drawer sides, but at the front inner edges of the case sides, curving notches (“rebates”) were carved or planned in. The drawer fronts were cut to project past the drawer sides, and the ends of the drawer fronts were cut to matching curves and fit in the notches at case front edges. Later, inner case sides evolved from vertical to being faceted in a series of successive angles roughly following the case side profile, and drawer sides were then cut at 8