Thomas Dennis shop tradition, pt. 2

and a detour about William Searle

I’ve finished fooling around with Windsor chairs for a little bit, today it’s back to carving, in preparation for my upcoming workshop at Lost Art Press. I heard yesterday there’s one spot left in the carved-box class I’ll teach at Pete Galbert’s in September. Details here https://www.petergalbert.com/schedule/2020/7/13/make-a-chair-from-a-tree-with-peter-follansbee-8brcj-7b62n-xafjp-mglkm-lrd5m

And one box left here for sale - $1,500 plus shipping. Email me if you’re interested Peterfollansbee7@gmail.com

PF carved box, June 2024

That box is derived from the works associated with Thomas Dennis - so a good place to transition into today’s part 2 of my study of that carved furniture. I’m picking up where I left off looking at the Thomas Dennis work. One thing I want to make clear - very little of this subject is “my” research. The attribution of these carved pieces to Dennis happened long ago and all the furniture scholars who took on this body of work built on what came before. As it should be. There’s been a couple of cases where I, or Trent and I, have been able to point out to present owners that they have a piece that’s part of this group. But that’s about the extent of my direct involvement. Otherwise, what I’m presenting here is a synopsis of the whole story with my take on some bits and pieces. 

To organize my thoughts, I started by making a list of what the group consists of; mostly chests and boxes. The starting point is Irving P. Lyon’s 1930s articles “The Oak Furniture of Ipswich, Massachusetts” collected in Robert Trent’s Pilgrim Century Furniture (1976). Lyon’s series was 6 articles, but it’s the first two that actually discuss works associated with Thomas Dennis. When the starting point is scholarship that’s almost 90 years old, one thing to watch for is that often the furniture has changed hands in intervening decades. Other works are right where they were when Irving P. Lyon visited them. He saw things at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston that are still right where he left them. 

But others have shifted. So the list includes what I know about the objects - where they were when Lyon saw them and where they are/were when I last knew about them. I am able to account for most of them - there’s really only a few that are un-accounted for.

[I made the list as an illustrated PDF subscribers can download at the end of this post.]

One great thing in this sort of work now is that many museums have their collections cataloged online. So - Lyon saw the chest mis-dated 1634 in a descendant’s home in New Hampshire. I first heard of it in a private collection a zillion years later and it is now in the collection of the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee, WI. 

“1634” chest, Chipstone Foundation