Description:
Rope-seat joined settle with crest rail decorated with relief-carved tulip-and-leaf motifs, deeply canted arms, seat rails drilled with close-set holes to receive rope seat and rectangular stretchers. The sweet-gum backboard is nailed into rabbets in the siles from behind, set into a groove in the crest rail and secured to the rear seat rail with a centered wood pin (missing). A split in the front seat rail is repaired with an iron band; the bottoms of the proper left front and rear legs and the stretcher are replaced; both rear seat rail tenons are patched and the mortise-and-tenon frame joints are secured with modern round pins. This settle and a table fragment with tulip-and-leaf carved rails are the only two examples of furniture with tulip-and-leaf relief carving that are not frame-and-panel chests, of which there are more than 200 surviving examples. Further, this is the only known rope-seat settle with carved decoration made in America. It conforms to English examples made between 1680 and 1750 in the environs of Yorkshire except that its back departs from the frame-and-panel English examples. Owned in the twentieth century in Newport, Rhode Island. It was probably made in Ashfield, Massachusetts, by carpenter Chileab Smith (1708-1800). For the design of the carving, Smith made a template by tracing the carving on the top rail of the frame-and-panel chest that his wife, Sarah Moody (1709-1789) brought to their marriage in 1732 (now owned by the Detroit Institute of Arts). The tulip-and-leaf passages on both pieces are nearly identical. Chileab Smith founded a Baptist church in Ashfield and, in the 1770s, became embroiled in a dispute with the Massachusetts legislature over nonpayment of taxes to support the town’s congregational minister, ultimately petitioning the king of England for relief, which was granted. In 1774, he joined several other Baptist ministers in an appearance before the first Continental Congress to advocate for the separation of church and state.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2001.41 |
