Very Rare Pair of Federal Carved Poplar Cornice Ornaments, Attributed to John Skillin (1745-1800), Boston, Massachusetts, Circa 1790

Made of poplar and retaining remnants of painted decoration, this matched pair of carved figures have two holes on their underside for securing them to an object. They were likely made as architectural figures for a door frame. Their style of carving is similar to that of John Skillin (1745-1800) and his brother Simeon, Jr. (1756-1806), the eminent Boston ship carvers who made figural and architectural carving throughout the Revolutionary War and during the Federal period. Their shop made figureheads, stern board figures, scrolls, brackets and catheads for ships of the Continental Navy and United States Navy, merchant ships, and privateers. They also carved busts and figures for the homes and gardens of their patrons, many of whom were wealthy merchants in the Boston area. Few of their carvings have survived and most, like the present figures, have been removed from their original setting.

Similar carved figures made by the Skillins are found on a chest-on-chest made by Stephen Badlam (1751-1815) for Elias Hasket Derby (1739-1799) and his wife, Elizabeth Crowninshield Derby (1735-1799) of Salem to present to their daughter, Anstis Derby (1769-1836), on the occasion of her marriage to Benjamin Pickman, Jr. (1763-1843) in 1789. The chest-on-chest is in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery and illustrated in Gerald Ward, American Case Furniture (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1988): no. 82, pp. 171-177. The present figures relate to the two flanking figures atop the Badlam chest. All are reclining female figures clothed in an ankle-length, neoclassical style dress with their heads encircled with garlands and holding cornucopia filled with flowers on the present pair, and a palm front and cornucopia filled with wheat sheaves and fruit on the Badlam chest. Another related figure and carving attributed to the Skillins in known on a chest-on-chest in the Karolik Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (see Edwin Hipkiss, M. And M. Karolik Collection of Eighteenth-Century American Arts, Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1950, no. 41, pp. 74-75).