AMERICAN SLANT FRONT CHIPPENDALE DESK WITH BALL & CLAW FEET, POSSIBLY CALVIN WILLEY, CONNECTICUT,Circa 1790. Various signatures. Slant front desk opens to rosette carved door panel, opening to two shaped drawers over one short drawer; flanked by two narrow, deep drawers faced with column; flanked by two banks of three compartments over drawer, flanked by three rosette carved drawers over two short drawers; all over four long drawers, two pulls; raised on ball and claw feet. Brass pulls and eschuteon are old. Lacking one lock.
The desk has many of the characteristics of the Colchester School of Cabinetmaking, the focus of an article written by Thomas & Alice Kugelman, Furniture in the Colchester, CT Style, published in the Magazine Antiques, September 2005, Pages 96-103. In the article, the Kugelmans identify four major groups of furniture in this style, including one termed the "Calvin Willey group'.
Numerous signatures to drawers: Wylye on the bottom of the lower center drawer below rosette. The signature is almost an exact duplicate of the Wyllie signature found on page 243 of Connecticut Valley Funiture, Eliphalet Chapin & His Contemporaries. Signature Baram or Bavam on underside of the short bottom drawer on the far right side of interior. M or W Barnis signature ton the side of the same drawer. These possibly are signatures of apprentices working in his workshop at the time.
One of the defining construction features of the Willey group of furniture is a platform base consisting of a double bottom board to which a complex base molding and scrolled feet are attached. - H: 45 in. x W: 46 in. x D: 23.5 in. Estimate $1,000-2,000
