James Conrad, a regular reader of this blog, sent me a comment about an exhibition next week in Exeter, Devon, England. It includes several pieces of joined furniture, mostly chests, made in the area. Devon is significant in New England furniture studies because furniture made there is clearly linked to that made in Ipswich, Massachusetts. c. 1660-1700.
Folks familiar with my carved work will immediately see the influence this material has had on me . I have not seen the pieces in the exhibition, but have been to Devon before and seen a number of works from that area, among them these church pews in Totnes.
carved pews, Totnes, Devon
detail, Totnes pews
Well, I didn’t need church pews here in the house, so I adapted the carvings to fit a box to store junk in:
carved box, oak & pine
detail, box side
Here’s the links to the exhibition details. There’s some great carving there…and I’ll not say more for the time being…
http://www.maineantiquedigest.com/stories/index.html?id=1550
October 26, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Fascinated to see what I am assuming are the marking out lines on your box Peter – no pencils then I guess so a scratch awl would have been used. Do you think that something similar would have been apparant on the pew when it was new and that time and lots of polishing has simply ’smoothed’ them away?
October 26, 2009 at 2:34 pm
One of the features of the exhibition seems to be that the quality of the timber available in Devon for joinery shops starting in the 1580s was it’s poor quality.
Considering the fine quality produced in the final product noted in the post below “Better than nothing”, joiners who immigrated to New England must have thought they had died and gone to heaven, timber wise