Description:
Holbrook married his first wife, Harriet Converse (1804-1833), in 1816. He married his second wife, Mary E. Chessman, in 1839. He and Harriet had a daughter Harriet Eliza Holbrook, born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1828. He appears to have later relocated to New York City, but is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Little is known about Holbrook's furniture business. An advertisement in 1829 in the Springfield newspaper describes him as a maker of "Cabinet Furniture and Fancy Chairs." The attribution to Holbrook is made on the close similarity of the carving and almost identical construction to the labeled sofa, 2017.24. While skilled, the carving and overall shape and construction of this sofa are not as sophisticated as the carving on a contemporary sofa from the Connecticut River Valley, 2011.23.2. This suggests that it would have been part of the furnishings of an aspirational, upper-middle class family. The motifs on the carved rails, arms, and legs, could be associated with the agricultural bounty of the area, which the original owner may have been a part. This sofa is an important document of interiors of an ascendant middle class in Springfield during the second quarter of the nineteenth century.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2017.39 |
