From at least the early 20th century, and especially since the emergence of the Studio Furniture movement, most furniture makers who use shop marking to identify squared faces and edges of boards and to differentiate and orient carcase and drawer parts, have removed these marks from their finished products through planning, erasure, or other means. … Continue reading Theories of Structure – The Shop Marks of John Head
Dealing with Drawers
In January 2009, Christie’s, New York, sold a small spice box described in their catalogue as a Chippendale Walnut Spice Cabinet, Probably Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1740-1780. Christie’s was not familiar with aspects of design and construction that could be found in work documented to John Head’s shop and missed an opportunity to attribute the spice … Continue reading Dealing with Drawers
Boxes in Boxes
John Head and his journeymen and apprentices knew how to make boxes. They made scores and scores of boxes; carcases of chest on chests, high chests and dressing tables, spice boxes, desks, 4-tier chests of drawers, and the drawers they contained. Hundreds of "boxes" were produced by joiners in the Head shop from the end … Continue reading Boxes in Boxes
A Chest-on-Stand
On April 25, 2018 Freeman’s sold a black walnut chest-on-stand with a provenance in the Moon family of Lower Bucks County, Pennsylvania. For the third time in a year and a half, Freeman’s, had offered at auction a previously unpublished furniture form made in the Delaware River Valley in the first quarter of the eighteenth … Continue reading A Chest-on-Stand
Addis Family Update
A reader recently commented that it is “always interesting to see what others find on the Addis family”. I second that thought, and the extended Addis family has heard us! Several current Addis family members have been updating the Addis family tree on the website Ancestry.com. Though both S. J. Addis and his younger brother … Continue reading Addis Family Update
In Proportion to the Trouble 