Description:
Chest of drawers with a serpentine front made by Erastus Grant (1774-1865) in October 1799. Grant was born in Westfield after his parents, Alexander (a housewright) and Miriam Sexton Grant, moved there from East Windsor, Conn. 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 from Georgian or Chippendale to Empire. His shop output dates from about 1795 to 1838. Grant's addition of an inlaid patera on the top and quarter-round fans on the drawer facades makes this chest the earliest known documented piece of furniture with Classical detail made in western Massachusetts. The chest also dates the use of cut nails, used to fasten the drawer bottoms and backboards, in western Massachusetts. The chest was bought originally from a West Boyleston woman (maiden name Young) in her 90s by a picker, David Ludden of Rutland, Vermont, who consigned it to Dick Raymond of Brimfield Antiques; Ludden said that the woman's father or grandfather had emigrated from England to Mount Lebanon, NY/ Hancock, Mass. area about 1840 and purchased the chest then as second-hand furniture. The chest has a serpentine top inlaid with a central oval pattern, over four graduated drawers with a conforming shape, applied bead and cherry veneer, and highlighted by inlaid quarter fans at each corner, over four bracket feet. Also see 67.120, 82.004, and 96.001. 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. The top drawer back, sides and bottom are yellow-poplar. The glue blocks are white pine, and the inlay is possibly maple.
Label Text:
Westfield cabinetmaker Erastus Grant (1774-1865) embraced the newly-fashionable Classical style, seen here in the inlaid oval patera in the center of the top and stringing and quarter-fans on the drawers. This bureau is among the earliest furniture in western Massachusetts fashioned with cut nails.
Grant trained with East Windsor, Connecticut cabinetmaker Eliphalet Chapin—an apprenticeship that his father, Alexander Grant (1755-1801), a Windsor housewright who moved to Westfield in 1764, probably arranged. In departing from Philadelphia-derived furniture designs that Grant learned during his training, this bureau demonstrates Grant’s determination to succeed in an increasingly competitive marketplace by keeping abreast of the latest styles. As his career progressed, he adapted Classical designs and introduced fancy-style seating furniture.
Original owner: Purchased from the Young family of West Boylston, Massachusetts in the twentieth century. By family tradition the bureau descended from a nineteenth-century English immigrant forebear who settled in the vicinity of Hancock, Massachusetts/Mount Lebanon, New York in the 1840s and who acquired it locally as second-hand furniture.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+86.080 |
