more strapwork carvings

the beginnings of another carved box

Yes, more strapwork carving. I’ve slightly switched gears while I wait for the cupboard to be picked up this week. I got skittish, worried I might knock something into it while planing or turning. So I’ve been carving more than anything else these past few days in the shop. Finished that yellow cedar box and began another in oak yesterday. More strapwork designs, one of my favorite. Never the same twice. For some background - 

I first learned this style from studying the New England works of Thomas Dennis (and maybe his wife’s first husband William Searle) - both in Ipswich Massachusetts 1660s. There’s been a lot written in furniture history about Dennis - he left a good paper trail as well as several pieces of furniture that descended directly through his family. And based on those pieces, we can attribute lots more to him. Or to him & Searle - Dennis would have ended up with whatever Searle left to his wife. Good motive for murder maybe. 

This box-with-a-drawer at Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick ME is one of the pieces that descended through the family.

Thomas Dennis box w drawer, 1660-1700, Ipswich Massachusetts

A related box at Historic New England survives without its drawer. These are the two most elaborate strapwork patterns from early New England. Two wainscot chairs, one at Bowdoin and one at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts also have strapwork carvings  - across the crest rail - but because of that scale, the patterns there are much less detailed. One more - the bottom rail of a chest at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. The crest rail from the Bowdoin chair, about 4” high - so quite small really:

detail crest rail wainscot chair Bowdoin College Museum of Art