The Jonathan Smith Jr. chest on chest on frame

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 1997 by Donald R. Friary

When the chest on chest on frame shown in Plate I was offered at Sotheby's in New York City on June 27, 1991,(1) we at Historic Deerfield in Deerfield, Massachusetts, knew we must have it. Not only was it a major piece of American furniture, but also an extraordinary example of the Connecticut River valley style. A paper label fixed to the back of a drawer identified its maker, Jonathan Smith Jr., and its owners, a newly married couple living in Deerfield in 1803. Finally, for Historic Deerfield it was the end of a long pursuit, for the chest on chest had been known to our curators for years, but had always been just out of reach.

The chest was made in 1803, but our story begins in 1935 with an article by C. Malcolm Watkins on the antiques page of the New York Sun on August 10. There he named the maker of the chest, the previously unidentified Jonathan Smith of Conway, Massachusetts [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. Twenty-one years later Roger Wentworth of Arlington, Vermont, gave a copy of the newspaper clipping to Henry Needham Flynt (1893-1970), the cofounder of Historic Deerfield, and identified the current owners. Flynt promptly wrote to the owners, who had moved to Perrysburg, Ohio, near Toledo. They sent photographs of the chest, but firmly declined to loan or sell it.(2) Occasional subsequent attempts to locate the chest proved fruitless, but it was kept high on the museums list of potential prizes and the grainy photograph from the New York Sun was frequently used in lectures about Connecticut River valley furniture. In 1990 Leigh Keno, a 1979 Historic Deerfield Summer Fellow, was invited to examine an estate in a New York City apartment and found the prize in a maids room, awaiting consignment to Sotheby's.

The chest is made of cherry, once richly stained to resemble mahogany, with eastern white pine as the secondary wood. It has simple, squat, cabriole legs with pad feet, but in every other respect represents excess in decoration. The skirt of the frame is molded and pierced by drilled holes. The lower case of three drawers has engaged stop-fluted columns, while the upper case has engaged spiral-turned columns. The four graduated drawers on the upper case are topped by a tier of three drawers, the center one of which bears a double-carved shell. Above that is a single drawer with a double-carved sunburst. On top of that is a double scroll pediment with a large fluted keystone at the center and two smaller flanking keystones with two large lantern finials above. Every kind of decoration practiced by rural carvers was lavished on this masterpiece of the Connecticut River valley style. The original rococo brass pulls and escutcheons were soon replaced by the surviving stamped-brass hardware from a Birmingham, England, manufacturer. They show a woman reclining on a cornucopia with a laurel sprig and a distant ship.(3)

The chest is a striking expression of the material culture of the region. Its monumentality recalls a Connecticut River valley doorway or tall-case clock, albeit of an earlier period. By 1803 restrained neoclassicism was in high fashion throughout the United States. However, in the town of Conway, the exuberance of the Chippendale style still appealed to young craftsmen like Jonathan Smith Jr., who was thirty-three at the time, and to his young newly wed customers.(4) Glistening cherry, undulating keystones, and boldly carved sunbursts and shells continued to be in the local taste. New technology is evident in the predominant use of cut nails, although heavier wrought-iron nails were used on the upper backboard.

The label pasted to the back of the sun-burst drawer reads:

These Drawers were made by Jonathan Smith of Conway Mass for Lydia Batchelder who married Simon DeWolf in Dec. 1803 and was a part of her outfit for housekeeping. The drawers remained in the house at West Deerfield till moved to Greenfield So says Almon De Wolf Feb 1886.

Since Almon DeWolf (1806-1886) was the son of the original owners, his testimony is reliable.

The Batchelders and DeWolfs are easily traceable in local sources,(5) and the chest descended directly in their family until it was sold at Sotheby's. Jonathan Smith was harder to trace. A search by Historic Deerfield's curator Philip Zea revealed that Asa Frary, a Conway storekeeper, sold assorted goods to "Jonathan Smith 2d" in the 1790s, for which Smith traded butter, labor, a bedstead, a table leaf, a wheelbarrow, and a pung frame.(6) A deed of 1802 identifies Smith as a "Joiner & Carpenter" and records the sale of land in Conway to him from Lydia Batchelders father, John.(7) Could it be that Smith paid for the land in part by making the chest on chest on frame for John Batchelder? If so, did he make the chest more elaborate to further reduce his debt? This might explain the unusual extravagance of decoration on this chest, which must have been the centerpiece of the house in the western part of Deerfield into which Lydia and Simon DeWolf moved in 1803.

1 Fine Americana, Sotheby's (New York City), June 26 and 27, 1991, Lot 444.