AN IMPORTANT AND VERY RARE PILGRIM CENTURY JOINED WALNUT TWO-PART CHEST OF DRAWERS, ATTRIBUTED TO RALPH MASON (1599-1679), HENRY MESSINGER (W. 1640-1681) AND THOMAS EDSALL (1588-1676) SHOP TRADITION, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, CIRCA 1680 |

appears to retain its original finish and cast brass hardware and feet; chest divides along its waist and is composed of two parts.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
Joe Kindig Jr. & Son, York, Pennsylvania, September 1970;
Vogel Collection no. 73.

Wear, discoloration, and minor losses to edges commensurate with age and use. Original turned ball feet and finish. Few patches to the moldings on the drawers, particularly the second drawer from the bottom. Bears two accession numbers to the reverse (09.125.36) and (10.125.36). Secondary wood: Oak and white pine.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

This chest of drawers is one of an important group of seventeenth-century case pieces attributed to the work­shops of Ralph Mason (1599-1678/79), Henry Messenger (in Boston beginning 1640, d. 1681), and Thomas Edsall (1588-1676). The three London-trained woodworkers moved to Boston, where they produced high style and top-of-the-line furniture and trained two succeeding generations to work in the same London-based tradition. Chests of drawers did not exist in England or America before the 1640s. Instead, blanket chests and cupboards were used for storage. Evidence of the earliest use of chests of drawers appears in English probate inventory records in the 1640s in well-to-do urban merchants' households.  As it was largely the merchant class who settled in Massachusetts, it should be no surprise that the type of furniture merchants used in London was popular in the new colony as well.  Two reasons for the success of these types of chests were their size and convenience. They fit into small urban households and the drawers provided much easier access to its contents.

Three closely related chests of drawers survive; one that descended in the Pierce family of Dorchester, Massachusetts, and is listed in John Pierce's probate inventory of 1744 as "a chest of drawers in the West Chamber" and valued at £2; the other in the Layton Art Collection at the Milwaukee Art Museum. They are discussed in Nancy Carlisle, Cherished Possessions: A New England Legacy, (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 2003), pp. 98-100, no. 27, and in Gerald W.R. Ward, ed., American Furniture with Related Decorative Arts, 1660-1830: The Milwaukee Art Museum and the Layton Art Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1991), 32-35; and also in Francis Puig and Michael Conforti, eds., The American Craftsman and the European Tradition, 1620-1820 (Minneapolis, MN: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1989), 39-40.