Description:
Queen Anne slant-front desk in walnut veneer, walnut and maple with pine and walnut as secondary woods. It was probably owned by Dr. Thomas Williams (1718-1775) who may have brought this desk with him when he moved to Deerfield from Newton, Massachusetts, in 1739. Once he established himself as a physician in Deerfield, Williams continued to maintain business and social ties to Boston, frequently traveling there to stock up on pharmaceutical supplies and to purchase household goods. A sign of his education and high socio-economic status, this desk is one of a handful of Boston-made pieces of furniture owned in Deerfield or elsewhere in the Connecticut River Valley. According to a 1986 genealogy by Mary Arms Marsh, Katharine Fuller Arms' daughter, the desk descended through Rebecca Williams Field (b. 1832), who the daughter of Ephraim Williams (1797-1870) and Rebecca Jackson Williams (1799-1833); grandaughter of Dr. William Stoddard Williams (1762-1829) and Mary Hoyt Williams (1740-1821); and great-grand daughter of Dr. Thomas Williams and Esther William Williams (1726-1800). In 1859, Rebecca Williams married Alfred Russell Field (1815-1870), an civil engineer who worked on the construction of the Hoosac Tunnel; Field died in a railroad accident on the way home after the funeral of his father-in-law, Ephraim Williams, in Deerfield on June 9, 1870. Rebecca then moved to Middletown, Conneticut, where she kept house for her father's cousin, John Williams (1817-1899), the son of Ephraim Williams (1760-1835) and Emily Trowbridge Williams (1792-1872) of Deerfield, who was a president of Trinity College in Hartford, and fourth bishop of Connecticut, and 54th in succession in the American episcopate. In 1889, Mary Williams Field (1863-1951), Rebecca's only surviving child, married George Spencer Fuller (1863-1911), son of the artist George Fuller (1822-1884) and Agnes Gordon Higginson Fuller, in Deerfield where George was also a farmer. George and Mary's children included Katherine Yale Fuller (b. 1891), George Spencer Fuller (1893-1950), and Elizabeth Brooks Fuller (1896-1979). As the only direct descendent of Ephraim and Rebecca Williams, Mary Williams Field Fuller inherited the Williams' Deerfield house and contents from her uncle, William Stoddard Williams (1834-1911), the son of Ephraim Williams and Rebecca Jackson Williams, who was an insurance agent in Greenfield. Mary Fuller sold the house to Deerfield Academy, and the desk went to her daughter, Katharine Fuller Arms, either directly from her grandmother, Rebecca Field, or through Rebecca and Mary Fuller. The desk remained in the Williams family until sold at auction in the 1980s. The desk has a hinged (original) lid with a period replacement lock opening to eight valanced pigeon holes over five short drawers, and a central prospect section adorned with turned colunettes; over four graduated drawers with the original brass pulls, over a molded base and four straight bracket feet. There is a fine, old finish with rich, dark patination, and six patched holes on the veneered top and slight planing on the top moldings from a later bookshelf added by the family.
Label Text:
Mitered moldings are nailed to the front, sides and back edges of the top. Battens, mitered at their upper ends, contain the 2-board slant lid, the projecting sides and top edge of which overlap the edges of the case. The top inside edge is reinforced with a beveled strip of wood. The prospect gallery is designed with 2 sets of 4 pigeon holes over double rows of scalloped, graduated drawers, flanking a central compartment featuring vertical document drawers decorated with columns bisected at their midpoints with ring turnings that divide a lower stop-fluted section from an upper open fluted section and that conceal behind their upper ends to small, narrow pen drawers; and a hinged concave-blocked door carved with fluting below a shell and set with a lock. This center door opens to 2 conforming pigeon-holes set between an upper, conforming shallow drawer and 2 conforming graduated lower drawers. The lower dovetail pins at the back of the drawer sides project beyond the back and act as stops. Beneath the lower drawer, a conforming board pulls out to reveal a recess that affords access to a shallow secret drawer beneath the prospect floor, accessed by a square finger-hole in the prospect floor from the drawer below. A full dust-board separates the top full drawer from the 3 drawers below. The sides are dovetailed to the desk floor and the case bottom and are fronted by stop-fluted quarter-columns that are glued to narrow vertical front posts tenoned into the top and bottom. The drawer dividers are tenoned into these vertical posts and are coped to fit around them, butting the sides. Two-part, L-shaped drawer supports are glued to the case sides. Drawer supports were glued and nailed to the case back (all are missing). The backboards consist of 4 vertical boards lapped together and nailed into rabbets in the sides. The feet are butted and glued to the bottom and to the underside of the projecting moldings nailed to the bottom and are reinforced at this joint with rectangular glue blocks. The scallop decoration between the spurred knee returns is nailed and glued to the molding. The drawer sides are dovetailed to the back and front; the bottom dovetails at the backs of the sides project beyond the back, serving as drawer stops. The bottoms are single-wide poplar boards nailed into rabbets in the sides and fronts and butted and nailed to the backs. Runners are glued to the sides; strips of mitered bead-molding are nailed into rabbets in the drawer fronts. All the drawers are fitted with locks. The top edges of the sides and backs are rounded. The brasses are replaced.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2003.44 |
