Some details about the Braintree chests

my 30-year obsession with a bunch of oak furniture

I wrote a short post on my wordpress site about an auction coming up in Sotheby’s in New York - one of the chests Jennie Alexander & I attributed to the Savell family of Braintree, Massachusetts.

Sotheby’s photo, auction January 20, 2024

https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/important-americana-furniture-folk-art-silver-chinese-export-art-and-prints/a-pilgrim-century-chest-with-drawer-attributed-to

I always come back to these chests - and boxes - they were the first group of New England furniture I studied and researched in detail. So I have many fond memories of what was then my new, un-folding career. 

[all the rest of the photos are related chests, not the current one for sale]

The chests are quite distinctive - when JA & I were first studying them, before we made the attribution, JA had coined the name “Master Over-Builder” for the then-anonymous maker(s) because these chests are built with such precision and care. And almost obsessive work. Most of them are chests with one drawer - always with four carved panels across the front. Always with a row of lunettes carved across the top rail - and on the drawer front, a related guilloche of rosettes - with some pinwheels between them. 

John Savell drawer front