Very Rare Queen Anne Cherrywood Flat-Top High Chest of Drawers, Probably Hartford, Connecticut, Circa 1750

This high chest has been in the same family since it was made. The early twentieth-century owners were Mary Gertrude Hammer (1871-1904) m. John Latimer Way (1860-1954) of Hebron, Connecticut. Her ancestors were from Wethersfield while his came from eastern Connecticut.

Thomas P Kugelman, M.D., and Alice K Kugelman, ‘The Hartford Case Furniture Survey’, Maine Antiques Digest, March 1993, p. 37A., fig. 5;

Thomas P. Kugelman and Alice K. Kugelman with Robert Lionetti, Connecticut Valley Furniture: Eliphalet Chapin and His Contemporaries, 1750-1800, (Hartford: Connecticut Historical Society Museum, 2005), cat. 48, pp. 114-5.

This fine high chest is the touchstone piece for a group of case furniture ascribed by Dr. Thomas and Alice Kugelman to the "John Roberts Group." The group includes eleven pieces; four bonnet-top high chests, thee flat-top high chests, and four dressing tables. Its design signature is the apron's flat central section. The shop also has the fastidious manner of extensively chamfering the inner edges of the lower case. For a detailed list of attributes see Thomas P. Kugelman and Alice K. Kugelman with Robert Lionetti, Connecticut Valley Furniture: Eliphalet Chapin and His Contemporaries, 1750-1800, (Hartford: Connecticut Historical Society Museum, 2005), p. 110-1.