Back to the Savell family of joiners and their boxes this time instead of chests There's two that are nearly identical, one at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the other at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Savell box, Braintree Masssachusetts, 1660-1690 Metropolitan Museum of Art
Neither with a history - both collected in the early 20th century. The lunettes on the front of the boxes are what tie them to the chests - the same pattern as on the top rail of the chests. Broken concave outline - with gouge-cut "birds" this way & that way, alternating throughout. Maltese cross punches inside this concave border too.
Some further details - two bands of diagonal chisel strikes, accented with the Maltese cross punch. Square wooden pins secure the rabbeted corners, like the square wooden pins securing the joined front/board case pieces.
MFA box detail
The ends of these boxes are carved as well - with a related, but different lunette.
Related by the broken concave outline, with the gouge-cut birds & punch. Accented the same way - chisel strikes in bands top & bottom. Gouge-cut crescent moons left & right of each lunettes with "echos" behind them. At the bottom center of the lunette's interior is a V-tool vertical line, with gouge cuts left & right of it - just like at the bottoms of the carved panels in the chests.
MFA box, side
Here's the bottom of a chest panel -
chest panel detail
A 1930s advertisement shows a desk box with lunettes like these Braintree/Savell boxes. (I didn't find this ad, it was given to me...) from the July 1930 issue of the Magazine Antiques.
the Magazine Antiques, Jul 1930
I actually saw that box before I saw this ad, it was at the Aetna Insurance company in Hartford, CT. in the early 1990s. Its end boards are carved with a rosette like the drawer fronts of the chests - and filled beyond that with leafy stuff relating to the panels. Maltese cross punch accents galore. Same construction, square oak pins securing the joints. (I assume all these rabbets are glued when pegged vs. nailed.)
desk box, William Savell, 1675-1700
So it's easy to see these three boxes related to each other and to the chests. But how about this box? It's the one Trent showed me in the late 1990s - and I saw it again a few years ago when it sold in New York. Under the thick coat of who-knows-what-finish, there's details that are very familiar.
Savell box
Square wooden pins securing the joints. Not the only joiners to do this for boxes, but it's not at all common. Usually nailed.
Zig-zag bands top & bottom with chisel strikes accented with punch.
The alternating lunettes have beveled areas between them that are treated like the bottom center of the panels and the ends of the previous boxes - complete with the vertical V-tool cut and the gouge cuts left & right of it.
detail Savell box
Now the ends - they're like the ends of the museum boxes - but different. Broken concave outline, gouge-cut birds, with a punch, but it's too messed up to tell if its'a cross - but a full outline repeated inside of that. With the birds & punch. Inside the arch of the lunette are V-tooled "veins" in pairs - like the chest panels and the other flat-top boxes. Between these are gouge-cut "tips" to these spaces, with a single V-tool line. And punch. Outside this lunette there are no crescent moons - but a leafy-tip shape again. One other place that shows up is in the joined front/board case chest at the Smithsonian - dead ringer for it. So I'm 100% sold that this box belongs to this group.
Savell box, end carving
Here's that detail between the lunettes on the Smithsonian chest
detail Smithsonian chest
Now one thing I've tried to do for 30 years is find the English antecedent to this body of work. The pieces from New England are so consistent in their construction and decoration that you'd think we'd be able to find the "source" in England without too much trouble. But you'd be wrong.
I did see one example a couple of years ago on Instagram - Darren Hadden of Hadden Antiques had a snippet of carving that caught my eye. I wrote to Darren recently and he gave me a photo of the table the carving is on - but had little other information about it. He bought it in Sussex I think he said. William Savell, Sr was from Saffron Walden in Essex - but furniture has traveled around some in the past 400 years.
Here's the shot Darren sent - see for yourself the parallels.
detail, table apron Hadden Antiques
broken concave border, "birds" inside this concave border, gouge-cut details, crescent moons, leafy tips between the lunettes, with V-tool vertical line. V-tooled "veins" inside the lunettes, this time the inner part is beveled and the area underneath is flat - but still treated with gouge-cuts w "echos" - and on & on.
Here's Darren's links - he handles oak furniture pretty regularly. Always nice to see more English stuff.
https://www.instagram.com/antiquehadden/?hl=en
https://www.antiquehadden.co.uk/
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