A Very Fine and Rare Chippendale Bonnet-Top Chest-on-Chest, attributed to John Wheeler Geer (1753-1828), Preston, Connecticut, circa 1780

Sotheby's, New York, The Collection of Alice and Murray Braunfeld, January 17, 2004, sale 7961, lot 1274.

This chest-on-chest is associated with the shop tradition of John Wheeler Geer (1753-1828), a cabinetmaker working in the Preston area of New London County, Connecticut, where the influence of furniture made in nearby Rhode Island was strong. Born in 1753, he may have served as an apprentice to Daniel Dennison II (b. 1740) of North Stonington, his brother-in-law as well as a collaborator on a desk, and an early supplier of woods and brasses. After finishing his training around 1774, Geer spent the early years of his career making furniture before focusing in later years on farm production, carpentry, weaving and shoemaking, in addition to cabinetwork (Edgar Mayhew and Minor Myers, Jr., New London County Furniture, 1640-1840, 1974, p. 118). His account book spanning the years 1775 to 1816, now at the Connecticut Historical Society, records that he made at least 102 chairs, 21 tables, 10 bedsteads or sets of bed posts, 7 chests and 3 stands. He also made coffins, cradles, candleboxes, knifeboxes and teapot handles. Three cases of drawers were recorded: one in 1778 for £24, another in 1781 for £4.10.0 and a third in 1783 for £4. The last cabinetmaking entry in Geer’s account book is for a chest made for Chester Smith in 1816. His favored wood for case work was tiger maple, with pine, chestnut, tulip and butternut used as secondary woods.

The distinctive configuration of this chest – the shape of the bonnet, the rosettes, the central plinth with vertical fluting, the stepped cornice molding, the freestanding rope-turned columns, the tongue and groove drawer construction, and the scalloped skirt – follows that of a maple chest-on-chest attributed to Geer, with a history of descent in the family of his brother David (see Mayhew and Myers, no. 64, p. 59). The chest offers a drawer construction identical to that on a blanket chest having Geer’s initials, which may have been made for his daughter and then descended in his family (see Mayhew and Myers, no. 63, p. 58-9). The blanket chest displays a skirt  that is remarkably similar to the skirt on this chest-on-chest. A related bonnet, columns and wavy shell are also found on a tallcase clock with works by Thomas Harland and a case attributed to Abishai Woodward (1752-1809), a Preston cabinetmaker who may have apprenticed to the same cabinetmaker as Geer (see Mayhew and Myers, no. 61, p. 57).

A group of six high chests of drawers attributed to Preston offer related details and may represent the same shop tradition. One at Yale University with similar drawer construction and dovetailing as in Geer’s work displays a bonnet, carved shells, and freestanding rope-turned columns that closely relate to those on the present chest-on-chest (see Gerald Ward, American Case Furniture, New Haven, 1988, no. 143, p. 272). Two others, one with a broken-scroll pediment and another with a flat-top, also featuring freestanding rope-turned columns and the distinctive wavy shell in the center of the skirt, include one in the collection of the Hartford Steam Boiler Company, illustrated in Three Centuries of Connecticut Furniture, 1635-1935, no. 151, and one illustrated in The Magazine Antiques (September 1951): 174. Three flat-top examples with the same columns and a shaped skirt are illustrated in The Magazine Antiques (February 1983): 339 and (August 1967): 147, as well as in John Kirk, Early American Furniture, 1970, fig. 92. John Wheeler Geer, Abishai Woodward, and their unidentified master, perhaps the aforementioned Denison, have been suggested as possible makers for the group (Mayhew and Myers, p. 56).