Block-front Furniture: Furniture made in the block-front design includes chests of drawers, knee-hole bureau desks and tables, slant-front desks and secretaries and chests-on-chests. Most of those with shell carving are considered to have been the work of two Newport, R. I., cabinetmakers, John Goddard and John Town-send. Less elaborate pieces were made by cabinetmakers working within an area comprising southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut except for one craftsman working in New York City who made a few knee-hole bureau tables.
In the same period, but in southern New England, other cabinetmakers were producing equally handsome and distinctive American pieces, known as block-front furniture. Its design is without any direct English prototype. As the name indicates, the fronts of such pieces have a triple formation in which the outer projecting blocks flank a central recessed one, thus dividing the area into three continuous vertical panels of equal width. With elaborate examples the panels are surmounted by large carved shells, the central one incised and the flanking ones raised. |
