Chippendale mahogany reverse serpentine (oxbow) slant front desk. Ball and claw feet. Circa 1770. Good, old surface. Relined drawers. Original back and bottom show the age and oxidation of some original, untouched secondary surfaces. Replaced drawer brasses. Some loose, smaller pulls for slant front slide supports and interior gallery drawers retained. A locksmith need be retained to loose the top drawer. Otherwise good condition. Massachusetts, probably Boston. Height, 44 1/2 inches. Width, 41 1/2 inches. Depth, 27 inches (add another 1.5 inches for convex drawer fronts and foot returns). A rare opportunity to acquire, enjoy and conserve as steward a beautiful specimen born with our country.

This desk may be inspected at The Antique Center at Historic Savage Mill, Maryland

Rare Chester County Pennsylvania Spice Chest in walnut having a moulded cornice above a raised panel door opening to an arrangement of ten small drawers (one replaced) and raised on straight bracket feet. Secondary woods include: poplar, oak, walnut and beech. There is a faint inscription on one of the bottom drawers. Pennsylvania, circa 1760-80.

Spice boxes or chests were a status symbol in colonial America. Only a household that was well furnished and fairly prosperous had a spice box. Spice chests were popular among the Quakers of the Delaware Valley during the late seventeenth and throughout the eighteenth centuries, remaining fashionable in Pennsylvania long after falling out of style elsewhere. The boxes, fitted in the interior with banks of small drawers, were often displayed in the public rooms (not the kitchens) of homes, functioning as both a repository for small valuables, such as spices and silver and jewelry items, and as a symbol of the family’s prosperity.

18"W x 9.75"D x 22" tall