Description:
Demi-lune commode with tri-part facade of four drawers in each vertical section, the hinged drawers at each side are triangular. All are inlaid with quarter fans and divided vertically with interlocking stringing above a base of four flared feet and an undulating skirt outlined with stringing surrounding an inlaid pearl. This Boston demi-lune commode was inspired by Plate 78 in George Hepplewhite's "The Cabinet-maker and Upholsterer's Guide" (1788), which is among the rarest and least practical forms in American furniture. Designed to impress and to confound, the chest is fitted with a tri-part facade of four bowed drawers in front flanked by four triangular drawers at each side that are hinged and can bear little weight. The chest is decorated with inlaid quarter fans; divided vertically with interlocking stringing above a base of four flared feet; and undulating skirt outlined with stringing surrounding an inlaid panel. The commode was designed to blend with the architecture and ornamentation of the day, which emphasized repeating ovals and arcs, and contrasting colors and patterns in the veneers, wallpapers, and paint found in a fashionable, Classical room. The commode was once owned by the early collector George Alfred Cluett (1873-1955) of Troy, New York and Williamstown, Mass., who probably purchased it from Charles Woolsey Lyon and Lawton. Drawer insides ar mahogany, probably Central American mahogany because of the waves visible in the grain. Rear corner blocks are pine. Bottom drawer runner replaced. Brasses replaced. Lightwood inlay. George Alfred Cluett (1873-1955), of Troy, New York, and Williamstown, Massachusetts, collected American furniture from around 1901, shortly after he and Edith Tucker were married, through the mid-1920s. Cluett was prominent among early collectors. For the first museum exhibition of American furniture, The Hudson-Fulton Exhibition, opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1909, Cluett loaned 22 objects. Cluett, whose family business became Arrow Shirts, finished collecting before Henry Francis DuPont began to amass objects for what became the core of the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. The Cluett family donated most of its collection to Historic Deerfield beginning in 1960, with its last gifts given in 2003. Cluett’s keen connoisseurship, focused on Classical objects (contemporary to his grandparents’ lives) is notable as he collected before the publication of the first seminal reference books on American antiques. Moreover, the early twentieth-century collectors focused on the so-called Pilgrim Century, which predates the Classical era by over one hundred years. Cluett was particularly intrigued by the work of craftsmen including Seymour, McIntire, Phyfe, and Lannuier. Cluett’s desire for privacy, and reverence for times past has long obscured his creative connoisseurship and legacy as one of the earliest and influential collectors of American furniture.
Label Text:
Countersunk screws driven through triangle-shaped partial cutouts in the backboard secure the top. A portion of one of these partial cutouts is visible at the seam between the replaced top board and the original lower board. Nails driven through the drawer guides into the backboard anchor the drawer guides and help to hold the backboard in place.
The bowed, shaped front and side skirts are composed of horizontal laminates and attached to the legs with mortise-and-tenon joints. The tenons are partially exposed on the sides of the legs where the legs were cut to create the flared French foot. The feet are butted against the vertical frame members and are probably attached with mortise-and-tenon joints.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+85.019 |
