Description:
High chest of drawers along with a scalloped-top dressing table (62.038), which were both made for John (1738-1811) and Content Little Hastings (ca. 1740-1829) who were married in 1764. When John Hastings died in 1811, the appraisers listed "Case with drawers [$] 12. 1 dressing table [$] 4." A matching high chest of drawers and dressing table were often found en suite in prosperous households. Especially ostentatious, they were designed to store folded clothes, accessories, and cosmetics for both men and women. This furniture was usually juxtaposed to the best bedstead in the house, which in the Connecticut Valley might be found in either the best parlor or chamber until the end of the eighteenth century. This high chest has the same appearance, materials, and construction techniques as the dressing table; the repetitive use of brass hardware and S-curves convey the impression of style and expense. The two objects were definitely made in the same shop and were probably made en suite although they both descended in different branches of the Hastings family of Hatfield. The chest is topped with a scrolled pediment with a single turned finial (replaced); over the upper case containing five tiers of graduated drawers, the upper tier containing two drawers, each highlighted with a spiral carved rosette, and all drawers bearing a pair of small brass pulls with an escutcheon. The lower case of the chest is supported by four thin cabriole legs with sharply carved knees below an ogee scalloped skirt containing five drawers in two tiers; the lower central drawer has a spiral-carved rosette. The scallop top concept on the dressing table, which begain in Wethersfield, Connecticut, in the 1750s, migrated up the Connecticut River Valley to the Northampton-Hatfield-Deerfield region of western Massachusetts, where other variants in this "style" were made into the first years of the nineteenth century.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+94.001 |
