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Culture:American
Title:desk-and-bookcase
Date Made:ca. 1790
Type:Furniture
Materials:wood: cherry, white pine; base metal: brass
Place Made:United States; Massachusetts; Deerfield
Measurements:overall: 86 x 44 x 23 in.
Accession Number:  HD 2014.30
Credit Line:Museum Purchase with Funds Provided by the Deerfield Collectors Guild & Elizabeth Stvan
Museum Collection:  Historic Deerfield
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Description:
This desk-and-bookcase was made in Deerfield about 1790. This desk-and-bookcase is an important object that defines Deerfield taste, technology, and consumerism. The cherry desk-and-bookcase comprises a slant-top desk with quarter columns and four graduated drawers below a writing interior and rests upon an independent frame supported by four short cabriole legs. The bookcase section has a pair of flat-panel doors flanked by quarter-columns below a dentil course with a broken scrolled "head" terminating in two six-petal rosettes. The pediment carries an applied pilaster beneath the central stylized flame finial. The desk-and-bookcase was made about 1790 by a known but unidentified cabinetmaker who used distinctive dovetailed backboards and the applied pilaster under the central finial plinth. Related objects by this craftsman are known, but not in Historic Deerfield's collection and none have yet been identified in public collections. It is in excellent condition with a pleasing surface dating to the third quarter of the nineteenth century, and mostly original hardware. The desk-and-bookcase has a documented history of descent in the family of Deerfield shoemaker David Saxton (1734-1800), who, in about 1765, built the salt-box house on Town Lot 1 across from Frary House/Barnard Tavern. Deerfield Academy owns the Saxton House today. The desk-and-bookcase may have been made for David's son, Rufus Saxton (1769-1857), who passed it to his son Jonathan Ashley Saxton (1795-1874), then to his son Major Samuel Willard Saxton (1829-1933) of Washington, D.C., then to his son Edward H. Saxton (1863-1953) of Leominster, Massachusetts, and then his nephew Willard Saxton Seward (1901-1993) of Guilford, Connecticut. The secretary is accompanied by related correspondence. David Saxton's wife, Rebecca Barnard (1728-1805), was the sister of Sarah Barnard (1725-1795), who lived across The Street in the Frary House and who built the tavern wing (Barnard Tavern) operated by son, Erastus (born 1768), until 1805.

Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2014.30

Research on objects in the collections, including provenance, is ongoing and may be incomplete. If you have additional information or would like to learn more about a particular object, please email fc-museums-web@fivecolleges.edu.

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