Fine and Rare Diminutive Chippendale Inlaid Cherrywood and Butternut Slant-Front Desk-and-Bookcase on Frame, probably Hartford County, Connecticut or Hampshire County, Massachusetts, circa 1785

Ginsburg & Levy, New York.

With stop fluted columns, candle slides, inlaid prospect drawer, step interior, pierced cast brass hardware and separate support frame, this desk-and-bookcase-on-frame is the product of a very ambitious Connecticut River Valley cabinetmaker.  Tangentially related desk-on-frame’s have been attributed to Suffield, Connecticut area (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), pp. 338-9, nos. 153-4 and Charles S. Bissell, Antique Furniture in Suffield Connecticut 1670-1835, (East Hartford, CT: Connecticut Historical Society, 1956), p. 53, pls. 25-6).  A desk-and-bookcase-on-frame in the collection of Historic Deerfield, made in Conway, Massachusetts, also relates (see Dean A. Fales, Jr., The Furniture of Historic Deerfield, (New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, Inc., 1976), p. 238, fig 476).