Description:
Paint-decorated, pine two-drawer work table made by Erastus Grant (1774-1865) and decorated by Eliza G. Halam, a student at Westfield Academy. Erastus Grant was born in Westfield after his parents, Alexander (a housewright) and Miriam Sexton Grant, moved there from East Windsor, Connecticut, in 1764. Grant was trained as a cabinetmaker, along with his contemporary George Belden (1770-1838), in the Hartford area, probably by Aaron Chapin (1753-1838), concluding his apprenticeship around 1795; he returned to Westfield where he worked until about 1840. By 1812, he maintained a large shop, changing his furniture styles with the times from Georgian or Chippendale to Empire. His documented shop output dates from about 1795 to 1838. Other documented cabinetwork by Grant at Historic Deerfield includes a 1799 serpentine chest of drawers (86.080), a circa 1805 bureau (67.120), and a 1838 miniature bureau (82.004). Other work by Grant is in the collections of Old Sturbridge Village and the Westfield Atheneum. Representing the intersection of decorative, utilitarian and social functions, women popularized worktables after the American Revolution for storing sewing notions and incomplete work. Often displayed in the best parlor, work tables not only implied their users’ possession of sewing implements, materials and skills but also signified their ability (or aspiration) to devote the time needed to carrying out advanced sewing projects. This table also documents the painting curriculum of Westfield Academy (opened in 1800) during the late 1820s. Working in brown ink - a monochromatic medium popular in the 1820s - Eliza used both pen and brush to execute pastoral views of castles and cottages, shells, musical scores and foliate borders adapted from prints. The imagery evokes the romantic and fanciful settings of novels, poetry and popular literature of the period. The overhanging, rectangular top and sides are decorated with scenes of castles and cottages, and the top drawer is decorated with shells and the bottom drawer with an open music book, all surrounded with foliate borders. The two graduated drawers are fitted with stamped, round brass pulls, and the feet of this example were reduced in height at a later date. It was decided not to restore the legs until complete documented examples of Grant's turned furniture are identified. Important note regarding current scholarship on Erastus Grant and George Belden (added August 2016): Erastus Grant has long been thought to have been an Eliphalet Chapin Shop apprentice, and he may well have been, but there is no documented evidence to support this. Grant did make a desk-and-bookcase and an unusual three drawer oxbow chest that are almost identical to pieces that George Belden made, and both employed Chapin-Shop construction methods such as quadrant bases. It is likely but yet to be proven than not that Grant and Belden (who was three years older than Grant) apprenticed together, but it cannot be said with certainty where.

Label Text:
Specialized furniture for women, such as small tables fitted with drawers and/or sliding baskets to store sewing and needlework projects, grew in popularity after the American Revolution. The form’s purpose, coupled with its portable design, suited it well for decoration as a school art project. Eliza Halam, known only by the inscription on this worktable, decorated this example while attending Westfield Academy. Using pens and “pencils” (small round brushes with tips shaped to points) to imitate line engravings, she executed views of castles and cottages, shells, musical scores and foliate borders exclusively in brown ink, a monochromatic palette popular in the 1820s. She probably based her pictorial designs on print sources.

Westfield native Erastus Grant (1774-1865) learned the cabinetmaking trade as an apprentice in the workshop of East Windsor, Connecticut cabinetmaker Eliphalet Chapin (1741-1807). After completing his training, he worked for several years as a journeyman cabinetmaker in Lansingburgh (present-day Troy), New York before moving back to Westfield in 1799 and establishing a shop where he produced a full line of furniture and coffins through the mid-nineteenth century.

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