Description:
Cupboard in hard pine originally painted Spanish brown. The cupboard has a molded top overhanging the body; flanking scalloped panels, which were carved from the solid (not joined), around the two upper shelves; and molded panels on the door and lower sides. The door is attached with two old wrought iron H hinges. According to Philip Zea, antiquarians have assumed that these cupboards are French Canadian, which may be based on their being joined, paneled and looking a little like "les armoire Quebecoise", such as those in the Historic Deerfield collection, 1569 and 56.350. However, these scalloped cupboards (see also 61.071) were probably made in western Massachusetts as an extension of the scallop-top tradition in case furniture. They are relatively rare and invariably made of hard pine, dating from the third quarter of the eighteenth century. These cupboards were apparently down-scale versions of built-ins for use in parlors in more modest homes, although antiquarians have interpreted them for kitchen use. However, these cupboards were relatively expensive undertakings in their own right since the panel carvings on this example would have taken awhile to execute in hard pine. There is a similar cupboard at Winterthur, which belonged to Osmund and Winifred Skinner of Shelburne, Massachusetts, and another in the Brooklyn Museum (44.176.1), which was a gift of Luke Vincent Lockwood and illustrated in his "Colonial Furniture" (Vol. 1, p. 178).
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+0335 |
