Lot 544
  • 544

Red and Black Painted Poplar Miniature Chest decorated with Riders on Horseback, Probably Berks County, Pennsylvania, circa 1795

Estimate
25,000 - 35,000 USD
bidding is closed

Description

  • MINIATURE CHEST
  • Paint on pine and poplar, with iron hardware, base replaced.
  • 11 by 19 5/8 by 11 3/16 in.
  • C. 1785-1800
Base molding and feet replaced.

Provenance

Nichols Antiques, Breinigsville, Pennsylvania, 1994

Exhibited

"Folk Art Revealed," New York, American Folk Art Museum, November 16, 2004-August 23, 2009

Literature

American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum, p. 181, fig. 152.

Condition

The proper left side of demilune portion of tombstone painted panel with a 3/4 by 1/2 inch inpainted area. Restorations to base.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

Surviving eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century household inventories indicate that the chest was one of the earliest and most common forms of domestic furniture in the Pennsylvania German interior. The chest was often the only piece of furniture that accompanied immigrant colonists to America, and most decorated chest forms produced within both Germanic and Anglo-American colonial settlements closely follow traditional European or English prototypes.1

While a number of scholars have debated the role of the chest within the traditions of marriage and dowry, many details of early Pennsylvania German household chests-the owners' names or initials and the dates of presentation inscribed in paint and surviving genealogical information-confirm that the form was regularly given to a couple to augment the furnishings of a newly formed household or to single men and women as they reached adulthood.2 Useful for secure storage of valuables and personal property, chests were also adaptable within the limited space of many early households, and their basic forms were regularly called into service for seating and as table surfaces. Their bright decorative treatments were often the work of specialized ornamental painters who rarely signed or otherwise identified their work. This miniature version follows the pattern of construction and decorative composition of full-scale versions roughly three times its size, incorporating the wedged dovetail joinery, pinned moldings, and applied molded, bracketed feet commonly utilized by Pennsylvania German cabinetmakers.

The front boards and lids of a number of Pennsylvania decorated chests are divided into architectonic niches or panels, either by their framed and paneled joinery or, in this instance, by flat, painted panels filled with figural decoration. The horse and rider is a motif found across a group of chests with Berks County histories, many of which incorporate a central panel decorated with a mythical unicorn flanked by other panels containing mounted horses. It is also an image commonly seen in a wide range of Pennsylvania German fraktur, woven textiles, and ceramics. Such popular iconography may have entered the shared consciousness and aesthetic of these communities after the Revolutionary War, with the popular imagery of General Washington on horseback, through earlier European military traditions or through other prominent engraved or printed sources. Similar motifs also appeared in hierarchical iconography such as royal seals, governmental shields, and heraldic crests. The rendering and costume in the horse-and-rider panels found on this small chest relate most closely to motifs on a number of Berks County fraktur. One rider bears a gun, while the other presents a peace pipe, possibly symbolizing the dichotomy of war and peace. -J.L.L.

1 For more information on traditions surrounding these chests, see Monroe H. Fabian, The Pennsylvania German Decorated Chest (New York: Universe Books, 1978).
2 Philadelphia Museum of Art and Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Pennsylvania German Art, 1683-1850 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 137-50.