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Lot 134: A QUEEN ANNE WALNUT SLANT-FRONT DESK
Auction House: Christie's
Auction Location: New York, NY, USA
20 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY
USA
10020
Phone: (212) 636-2000
Fax: (212) 636-2399
Email: info@christies.com
Auction Title: Important American Furniture, Folk Art, Silver and Prints
Auction Date: June 18, 2003
Artist or Maker: Boston, Massachusetts, 1730-1750
Description: A QUEEN ANNE WALNUT SLANT-FRONT DESK Boston, Massachusetts, 1730-1750 The rectangular top above a slant-lid with two inlaid mariner's compasses, opening to reveal a compartmented interior, over a conforming rectangular case fitted with four graduated long drawers each with line inlaid reserves, on bracket feet with shaped returns 39 1/4 in. high, 35in. wide, 19 1/2 in. deep
Provenance: John Walton, Inc., Madison, Connecticut
Published: Rodriquez Roque, American Furniture at Chipstone (Milwaukee, 1984), fig. 24, pp. 52-53.
Notes: Property from the Collection of the Chipstone Foundation, sold to benefit the Acquisitions Fund This early, inlaid desk is closely related to an important desk and bookcase in the Karolik Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (see Hipkiss, Eighteenth-Century American Arts: The M. and M. Karolik Collection (Boston, 1941), cat. no. 18). Both desks have slant-lids with nearly identical double mariner's compass inlay within line-inlaid frames, and corresponding rectangular line-inlaid drawer fronts. Furthermore, the profile of the shaped returns of the bracket feet is nearly identical in both desks. Another very similar desk, dated 1739, was made by William Parkman of Boston for the costly sum of fourteen pounds ten shillings (see Ellesin, ed., "Collector's Notes," Antiques (May 1975) pp. 952-953).
