|
Class of 2008 Grad Committee
info
Promoting Business
in Colchester:
Interested in other local history within the state? Please visit our
following website affiliates that are kind enough to list Colchestertalks.com
Visit Connecticut's Heritage Gateway
a program of
The Connecticut Historical Society
Find out about Colchester's current events.
Please click here.
Some site file downloads are PDF. Please
click here to down load a free version of adobe reader.
| |
The following information is provided under the
terms of agreement
with the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.
You can visit their site at
http://www.wadsworthatheneum.org
Chest on chest
Artist: Made by Samuel Loomis
(1748–1814) Colchester, Connecticut
Mahogany, tulipwood, and pine
1780–1785
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur L. Shipman, Jr., 1967.140
This chest, commissioned by the West Indies merchant
Jonathan Deming from the Colchester cabinetmaker Samuel Loomis, is a masterpiece
of American regional furniture. By inviting Loomis to test the limits of his
skill and inventive power, Deming provided an ideal context for innovation. The
resulting work demonstrates what can happen when a craftsman is challenged by
new styles and technologies. Loomis responded to the threat of Newport
block-front furniture (which the chest resembles) by emphasizing spectacle. The
architectural character of this chest’s components suggests a hand (and tools)
accustomed to building doorways, while the berries and tendrils that flank the
upper block and shell drawer reveal the persistence of folk ornament, an
intriguing response to the polished formality of Loomis’s Newport rivals.
Desk
Artist: Made by Samuel Loomis
(1748–1814) Colchester, Connecticut
Mahogany, tulip wood, and ivory
about 1770
Gift of Edward R. Bulkeley in memory of his parents,
Morgan Gardner Bulkeley, Jr. and Ruth Collins Bulkeley, 1991.44
Samuel Loomis is the most celebrated maker of
Colchester/Norwich style furniture. This desk, with its remarkable “waterfall”
interior, is a Loomis masterpiece. It is similar to a desk signed, made, and
dated 1769 by Benjamin Burnham, a Philadelphia-trained joiner to whom Loomis may
have apprenticed in Colchester. The influence of Philadelphia cabinetmaking is
not apparent in furniture made by either man. Loomis’s desk is boldly inventive.
Its fanciful and unorthodox combination of stylistic details pushes the
essential qualities of Baroque form in new and unprecedented directions.
© Copyright 2005 Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
|
