Metaboston

Rediscovering A Colonial Cabinetmaker in Salem

 

18th century New England furniture is very valuable and has been studied for a long time.  Yet Kemble Widmer of Newburyport and Joyce King of Wakefield deciphered ledgers at the Massachusetts Historical Society and found that a Salem cabinetmaker named Nathaniel Gould was the creator of much more furniture than was previously known.  This means his work has likely been misattributed in collections across the country.

Since 1835 three vellum-bound books with smudged handwritten pages have been lingering on shelves at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. The volumes, with lists of names, dates and prices scrawled on foot-tall sheets of rag paper, puzzled the few scholars who paid any attention to them until just last year.

This month the solution to the mystery is being announced with fanfare: Nathaniel Gould, a cabinetmaker in Salem, Mass., wrote those entries, and they represent thousands of furniture commissions shipped worldwide. Gould was previously thought to have produced perhaps a few dozen pieces. The ledger discovery could change attributions of carved mahogany, walnut and cedar objects for scores of museums, private collections and stores.

It is a nice historical redemption for Gould who died at 47 and had been thought to have only produced a relatively few pieces.

(Image:  Desk and bookcase from Gould's workshop in the collection of the Metropolitan)

The End of Antiques Row in Cambridge

With the last sale at F.B. Hubley's, the old antiques row between Harvard and Central Squares has also disappeared.

"A lot of people never thought they would see a final sale at the venerable F.B. Hubley Auction Galleries. It did conduct its last sale, however, and the June 4 auction marked the end of an era. It also denoted the end of antiques row, a several-block area in the shadow of Harvard Square that was once filled with dealers and auctioneers. Hubley's was the last to go. Established in 1935 by F.B. Hubley, the gallery has been run since the early 1940s by his son-in-law Robert Cann, who turns 91 in December."I am disconsolate," he said the day before the sale. "It is a very sad day.""

They'll still be continuing their appraisal service.

It's an interesting article about the long history of a store you might have passed by without thinking about it.