Follansbee's Substack

Follansbee's Substack

Share this post

Follansbee's Substack
Follansbee's Substack
Carved boxes from the Savell/Braintree group

Carved boxes from the Savell/Braintree group

Peter Follansbee's avatar
Peter Follansbee
May 14, 2025
∙ Paid
30

Share this post

Follansbee's Substack
Follansbee's Substack
Carved boxes from the Savell/Braintree group
4
Share

[I’m planning another series of carving videos - mostly (completely) focused on carvings I know from a group of 17th-century boxes. Like the strapwork video series I did not too long ago, this one will include a slide lecture about the history of this particular group. I gotta use this research somewhere before I forget it all. This blog post is my warm up for that part…]

Some time ago I wrote about the joined chests attributed to William Savell and his sons John and William of Braintree Massachusetts, c. 1640-1700.

Some details about the Braintree chests

Some details about the Braintree chests

Peter Follansbee
·
December 23, 2023
Read full story

When Jennie Alexander and I wrote our article about them for the 1996 volume of American Furniture, there were a few boxes that were part of the group too. These were clearly the same workmanship - based initially on their carved fronts - using the same lunettes as the top rails of the chests.

carved box, attributed to John Savell, 1642-1687 Metropolitan Museum of Art photo

The two flat-lidded boxes are both in museum collections - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and are nearly identical. The Met’s is a bit deeper front-to-back. But they share many features:

  • the 2 lunettes across the front as well as single, different lunettes on the ends of the box

  • all of these lunettes have the same outline - a hollowed-out border around the semi-circle…which is stopped at the top - it doesn’t connect left-to-right. All the details are consistent from one to another. (Alexander called this border the “marble run.”)

MFA box, John Savell - detail, photo PF
  • Maltese cross punch decorating the carving

  • pegged rabbet joints, 3 square wooden pins secure the joints instead of the more typical nailed construction

  • Gouge-cuts decorate the ends of the box front.

  • zig-zag borders above and below the carvings

side carving; MFA box, PF photo
  • multiple tills inside, with compartments that perhaps contained small drawers.

  • iron gimmal hinges, securing oak lids made from two riven, glued-up boards.

The third box in the article is a desk box I’ve only seen once - it’s part of a collection in an insurance company in Hartford Ct - or it was when I saw it in the early 1990s anyway.

desk box, William Savell, 1652-1700

It’s a beauty. Same front as the two other boxes - the two lunettes, the zig-zag borders - but the slanted/angled ends have a unique pattern combining the leafy panel design from the chests with a large rosette - similar to those found on the chests’ drawer fronts. Same pegged construction, same double-tills (along with a narrow compartment across the back of the box and a shelf above that probably likewise had drawers. My version of the desk box side panel below:

PF repro Savell desk box

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to Follansbee's Substack to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in
© 2025 Peter Follansbee
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture

Share