A CARVED AND PAINTED OAK BIBLE BOX

A rare example of seventeenth-century American furniture, this carved box displays design details seen on other forms made in Eastern Massachusetts. While the lunette was a common motif, the decoration along the front is distinguished by the double row of interlocking lunettes with trefoil shaping to the junctures. Similar treatment of lunette carving appears on chairs, chests and cupboards made from Essex to Plymouth counties along Massachusetts' eastern seaboard. The particular execution of the carving on this box is most closely related to that on the crest of a joined chair attributed to Hingham, Massachusetts (Robert Blair St. George, The Wrought Covenant: Source Material for the Study of Craftsmen and Community in Southeastern New England 1620-1700 (Brockton, Massachusetts, 1979), p. 63). For additional related pieces, see Frances Gruber Safford, American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art I. Early Colonial Period: The Seventeenth-Century and William and Mary Styles (New Haven, 2007), pp. 232-234.