Chest with drawer Maker: Unknown

1670–1710

American Decorative Arts

On view, 1st floor, American Decorative Arts before 1900

This chest is part of a group, known as Hadley chests, that utilizes a repeated tulip-and-leaf motif laid out with a template across all of the facade. These objects were made in the Connecticut River Valley from Springfield to Deerfield. They take their name from a town within this area, Hadley, Massachusetts.

Medium

Stiles, rails, muntins, front and side panels, drawer front, drawer sides, drawer runners, white oak; top, bottom of chest, drawer bottom and back, back panels, southern yellow pine

Dimensions

33 1/4 × 45 × 18 5/8 in. (84.5 × 114.3 × 47.3 cm)
other (Case): 41 3/4 × 17 7/8 in. (106 × 45.4 cm)

Credit Line

Mabel Brady Garvan Collection

Accession Number

1930.2190

Geography

Made in Massachusetts, Connecticut Valley

Culture

American

Period

17th–18th century

Classification

Furniture

Disclaimer

Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of records is ongoing.

Provenance
According to Luther (who offers only circumstantial evidence), the carved initials are for Mary (Russell), Root (1686-1738) of Sunderland, Mass. The chest was "discovered" in West Virginia by Luther and subsequently acquired by dealer Frank W. MacCarthy, Longmeadow, Mass., who sold it to Francis P. Garvan, New York, to 1930; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn.
Bibliography
  • Handbook of the Collections, exh. cat. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1992), 87, ill
  • Gerald W. R. Ward, American Case Furniture in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1988), 33, 81, 95–97, 98, 99, no. 28, pl. 1
  • John T. Kirk, American Furniture and the British Tradition to 1830 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 97–98, 155, fig. 399
  • Patricia E. Kane, "American Furniture in the Yale University Art Gallery," Antiques 117, no. 5 (June 1980), 1315, fig. 1
  • Victor Chinnery, Oak Furniture: The British Tradition (Suffolk, England: Antique Collector's Club Ltd., 1979), 507, fig. 4:204
  • Victoria Kloss Ball, Architecture and Interior Design: Europe and America from the Colonial Era to Today (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1979), fig. 1.21
  • Patricia E. Kane, The Seventeenth-Century Furniture of the Connecticut Valley: The Hadley Chest Reappraised, ed. Ian M. G. Quimby (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1975), 113, 94, no. 45, fig. 9, 10, 21
  • John T. Kirk, Early American Furniture: How to Recognize, Evaluate, and Care for the Most Beautiful Pieces: High Style, Country, Primitive and Rustic (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), 43–45, fig. 29
  • Meyric R. Rogers, "The Mabel Brady Garvan Collection of Furniture," Yale Alumni Magazine 25, no. 4 (January 1962), 6, ill
  • Meyric R. Rogers, "Garvan Furniture at Yale," Connoisseur Year Book, 1960 (1960), 54, fig. 1
  • Clair Franklin Luther, The Hadley Chest (Hartford, Conn.: Case, Lockwood, and Brainard Company, 1935), 107, fig. 67
  • Thomas H. Ormsbee, The Story of American Furniture (New York: MacMillan Company, 1934), 59–60, fig. 19B
  • Loan Exhibition of Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth-Century Furniture and Glass, exh. cat. (New York: American Art Galleries, 1929), n.p., no. 501, ill
Object copyright
No Copyright - United States
Additional information

Object/Work type

chests with drawers

Inscriptions

"M R" is carved on the center panel of the front; a modern inscription in black pain on the outside of the back read "Boulder Col[?]" above "8931/9."

Technical metadata and APIs

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