The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Bureau table

Bureau table

Images (6)

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Bureau table

Attributed to John Townsend (1732–1809)

Date:: ca. 1765
Geography:: New England, Newport, Rhode Island, United States
Culture:: American
Medium:: Mahogany, chestnut, tulip poplar
Dimensions:: 34 3/8 x 36 1/2 x 20 1/2 in. (87.3 x 92.7 x 52.1 cm)
Classification:: Furniture
Credit Line:: Gift of Mrs. Russell Sage, 1909
Accession Number:: 10.125.83

This artwork is currently on display in Gallery 751

Description

In eighteenth-century Newport, a thriving seaport ninety miles south of Boston, local cabinetmakers produced some of the most creative and uniquely American of all colonial furniture. One of their innovations was the introduction of carved, lobed shells to terminate the projecting or receding blocking on the fronts of chests and desks. On this example, a bureau table or kneehole chest, there are four shells in the distinctively elegant and crisp style of the master craftsman John Townsend.
Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Inscription: [in pencil, on bottom of large drawer]: Bottom [in chalk, on upper right drawer]: Mad by/ — [illegible?]/Mahongany [in graphite, on rails below small drawers, beginning at upper left]: A, B, C, D, E
Provenance

Pascal Allen, Warren, Rhode Island; his grandson Pascal Allen Horton, Stratham, New Hampshire, until 1907; [F. C. Higgins, Exeter, New Hampshire, 1907]; H. Eugene Bolles, Boston, 1907–9; purchased from him by Mrs. Russell Sage in 1909 for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
See also
Who
John Townsend (9)
What
Wood (7,651)

Furniture (5,725)

Mahogany (974)

Tables (974)

Case furniture (874)

Poplar (469)

Desks (193)

Chestnut (47)

Writing desks (22)

Bureau tables (5)
Where
North and Central America (81,404)

United States (78,109)

Rhode Island (165)

Newport (72)
When
A.D. 1600-1800 (66,180)
In the Museum
American Decorative Arts (11,825)
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
Art and Identity in the British North American Colonies, 1700–1776

John Townsend (1733–1809)

The United States, 1600–1800 A.D.
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