Description:
Joined chest with drawer made by Clair Franklin Luther (1866-1938), which is inscribed on the back upper rail: "CFL fecit Amherst MCMXXXV." There is a paper label affixed to the inside of the lid: "REPRODUCTION of a/HADLEY CHEST/Originals were made in Hadley, Hatfield and towns in the Connecticut Valley/1675-1730/This follows closely the design of a chest in the/DEERFIELD MUSEUM [Memorial Hall Museum] made for Rebecca Allis./b. Hatfield. 1683./The native white oak in this is from a house in Pelham, known/as The Castle, built cir. 1760. dismantled 1934; and from the Quaker/Meeting House, built 1808, dismantled 1935. Marks of the lath and/plaster may be seen in the lower right end rail on removing the/drawer. Hand-wrought nails from The Castle." When not busy with his duties as pastor for Amherst's Second Congregational Church from 1921-1937, Luther researched Connecticut River Valley antique furniture and reproduced examples, such as this chest, using antique tools, methods and materials in his basement workshop. Starting in the 1920s, he located and studied more than 100 seventeenth and eighteenth-century carved, joined chests made in the Connecticut River Valley towns of Deerfield, Hadley, Hatfield, Northampton and Springfield, Massachusetts, publishing his findings in the seminal illustrated catalog, "The Hadley Chest," in 1935. The name represented by the initials "ORC" is unknown.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2006.19 |
