Description
PROPERTY FROM THE DESCENDANTS OF JUDGE WILLIAM WALKER
height 89 3/4 in. by width 46 7/8 in. by depth 23 3/4 in. (228cm by 119.1cm by 60.4cm)
Signed Calvin Willey on bottom of bottom drawer, inside the proper left side of central wide interior drawer, and on top of lower case.
Appears to retain its original finish, hardware and finials.
PROVENANCE
Originally owned by Judge William Walker (1751-1831) of Lenox, Massachusetts, a probate judge, Captain of a Revolutionary War regiment, and owner of the Lenox Iron Works. He was born at Rehoboth, Massachusetts on July 3, 1751 the son of Caleb and Elizabeth (Perrin) Walker and died in Lenox on October 31, 1831. He married Sarah Woodruff (1749-1789) on December 31, 1777 in Farmington, Connecticut. After her death in 1789, he married Mary Hutchinson Parmelee on March 24, 1790. He is listed in Lenox in the 1790 and 1800 federal censuses;
To his son, Judge William Perrin Walker (1778-1858), who was born in Lenox on October 8, 1778 and died in Lenox on November 11, 1858. He served as a Probate judge (1824-1848) as well as a member of the State Senate, State House of Representatives, and Governor's Council;
To his son, Richard Henry Walker of Lenox;
thence by direct descent in his family to the present owner.
Correspondence between Houghton Bulkeley and members of the Walker family regarding this desk-and-bookcase and its history are extant in the collection of the Connecticut Historical Society. Xeroxes of the letters will accompany this lot.
LITERATURE
Bulkeley, Houghton. Contributions to Connecticut Cabinet Making. Bloomfield, Connecticut: Connecticut Printers on behalf of The Connecticut Historical Society, 1967.
Fig. 5, p. 19. Reprinted from the Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin cited below.
Bulkeley, Houghton. "The 'Aaron Roberts" Attributions." Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin. Vol. 28, no. 3, 1963.
Comstock, Helen. "Aaron Roberts and the southeastern Connecticut cabinetmaking school." The Magazine Antiques (October 1964): fig. 4, p. 439.
Howe, Florence Thompson. "Chairs bear labels of C. Bedortha, chairmaker of Agawam, Massachusetts." New York Sun (January 8, 1938).
Kugelman, Thomas P. and Alice K. Kugelman with Robert Lionetti. Connecticut Valley Furniture: Eliphalet Chapin and His Contemporaries, 1750-1800. Hartford: Connecticut Historical Society Museum, 2005, cat. 112c, p. 249.
NOTE
Proudly inscribed and incised multiple times with the name of its maker -- Calvin Willey (1769-post 1831) -- and retaining its original finish and openwork brasses, this monumental desk-and-bookcase is an important document of Connecticut River valley craftsmanship. Although its idiosyncratic design and construction reflect the shop traditions of the Colchester area of Connecticut where Calvin Willey learned his trade, the desk was made after he had completed his apprenticeship and moved to Lenox, Massachusetts, attesting to the geographic spread of popular eighteenth century furniture styles. Judge William Walker (1751-1831), a prominent Lenox citizen, commissioned this desk from Willey circa 1790 soon after his second marriage and probably for the new house he was building on Walker Street, which was completed in 1794. Remarkably, the desk has remained in Judge Walker's family ever since, for approximately two hundred and fifteen years, until the present time.
The present desk was included in a study of Colechester furniture conducted by Houghton Bulkeley, who published it along with his findings in the Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin for 1963 and Contributions to Connecticut Cabinet Making (1967). Bulkeley writes that Calvin Willey was born on August 8, 1769 in East Haddam, Connecticut the third of eight children of Lemuel (1739-1778) and Susannah (Fuller) Willey. He inherited 9 1/2 pounds and "10 acres and one rood of land" at his father's death and apprenticed to an unidentified second or third generation Colchester school cabinetmaker. He had apparently moved to Lenox, Massachusetts by 1791, when a deed in East Haddam records "Calvin Willey of Lenox in the County of Berkshire, Massachusetts" selling the land which he had inherited from his father to Ashbel Olmsted of East Haddam, for 26 pounds. He married Lurenia Dimmick about 1793 and their first child was born in Pownal, Vermont in 1794. Their nine other children were born in New Haven, Vermont between 1795 and 1816, and land transactions from 1797 to 1816 and the Census of 1800 through 1830 continue to record him in New Haven. His name does not appear in the Census for 1840 and his date of death is not known.
Calvin Willey fashioned the present desk with the trademark characteristics of the Colchester style, an innovative and regionally specific school of cabinetmaking assimilating influences from Newport in which large case forms were elaborately and idiosyncratically decorated with carving, punchwork, pilasters, columns, and applied ornaments. The distinctive characteristics of the Colchester school displayed on the present desk include the steeply scrolled bonnet top, perhaps inspired by the Palladian doorways of the Connecticut River valley, the elongated inverted shell of the center plinth, the cylindrical fylfot-decorated rosettes, the amphitheater interior with central shell drawer with tails, the rope-turned finials and quarter columns, the massive blocked façade with carved shells with long tails and convex shells with narrow rays, the horizontal fluting of the bottom drawer, and ogee bracket feet with cusped returns. Calvin Willey added the additional refinements to this desk of the stop-fluted plinth shell, the "lollipop" incised decoration of the rosettes, the blocking continuing to the cusped returns, complex moldings, and the unusually uniform dovetailing. He selected very expensive openwork brasses and twin locks for the fall front. He rabbeted and nailed the backboards and constructed the bonnet with no front to back support and a skin that does not extend to the cornice. In constructing the rosettes, he carved the front and turned the sides and attached them to the pediment with a peg and tapered the pediment to meet the rosettes. A meticulous numbering system appears on each drawer of the desk in the same hand as both signatures. The desk also displays a defining construction feature of the Willey group of furniture -- a platform base consisting of a double bottom board to which a complex base molding and scrolled feet are attached.
The Colchester school of cabinetmaking is the focus of Thomas and Alice Kugelman's article "Furniture in the Colchester, Connecticut style" published in The Magazine Antiques (September 2005): 96-103. They identify four major groups of furniture in this style, including one termed the "Calvin Willey" group that includes several of Willey's signed case pieces, a majority made during his years in Lenox and none with a history in the town of Colchester itself. Aside from the present desk, which appears to be one of his last pieces in Lenox, only one other piece is known with Calvin Willey's full signature -- a chest of drawers in a private collection signed "Calvin Wyley" on the inside of top-drawer bottom. The chest was originally owned by Hannah (1757-1822) and Nathan Peirson (1748-1826) of Richmond, Massachusetts and is illustrated in Thomas and Alice Kugelman's article as pl. XI on p. 103. A bonnet-top high chest of drawers also originally owned by Hannah and Nathan Peirson is attributed to Calvin Willey. Inscribed with a "W" on the inside back of the shell drawer, the high chest is currently in a private collection and appears illustrated as pl. IX on p. 102 of the Kugelmans' article. Two other pieces with a history in the Peirson family are also attributed to Calvin Willey. These include a tall-case clock in a private collection and a desk-and-bookcase in the collection of the Governor's Residence Conservancy in Hartford, Connecticut (see Thomas P. Kugelman and Alice K. Kugelman with Robert Lionetti, Connecticut Valley Furniture: Eliphalet Chapin and His Contemporaries, 1750-1800, Hartford, 2005, cat. 110b and cat. 110, p. 245-6).
A serpentine-front desk-and-bookcase inscribed "Calvin" with a history in the Burr family of Fairfield, Connecticut displays an identically constructed bonnet, openwork brasses, the same interior and idiosyncratic base construction. It was probably worked on by Calvin Willey during his apprenticeship in Connecticut. It is in the Barbour Collection at the Connecticut Historical Society and illustrated in Connecticut Valley Furniture, cat. 113, p. 250. Another desk-and-bookcase attributed to Willey with an identical desk interior and closely related pediment design is illustrated in a Ginsburg & Levy advertisement in The Magazine Antiques (April 1963): p. 369. A block-and-shell slant-front desk in the collection of the Connecticut Historical Society also apparently made by Calvin Willey during his years in Lenox is illustrated in as pl. XII of Thomas and Alice Kugelman's article. A slant-front desk of cherry also relating to this group was sold in these rooms, Important Americana, January 16-19, 2003, sale 7865, lot 526.
Sotheby's would like to thank Thomas and Alice Kugelman, the Connecticut furniture experts and co-authors of Connecticut Valley Furniture: Eliphalet Chapin and His Contemporaries, 1750-1800, for their assistance with the research for this desk-and-bookcase.
