Desk and Bookcase (c. 1780–95): Art, History and Details

Desk and Bookcase (c. 1780–95) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is John Townsend (American, 1732–1809).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In the 1700s, Newport, Rhode Island, was the fifth largest city in North America and one of the most important centers of shipping and trade along the Eastern Seaboard. Orders for furniture from its celebrated cabinetmakers came in from far and wide. This desk and bookcase was likely made for Oliver Wolcott Sr., a signer of the Declaration of Independence and later governor of the State of Connecticut. Eventually, the desk passed down through his family to Dorothy Draper, an important 20th-century interior decorator, and ultimately to her daughter, Penelope Draper Buchanan, whose husband gave it to the museum after her death—a rare, unbroken line of succession. Large desks were designed to hold all the necessary components of a gentleman’s office under lock and key: books, papers, pens and ink, and important documents. To serve such a function desks also became complicated masterworks of the cabinetmaker’s art, incorporating many parts from small drawers to large panels cut from a single tree, making them among the most expensive types of furniture available. This desk and bookcase exhibits the characteristic traits of classic Newport furniture—“plum pudding” mahogany, cupcake-like finials, and a carved shell on the inside of the desk.

Object facts

• Title: Desk and Bookcase
• Date: c. 1780–95
• Creator attribution: John Townsend (American, 1732–1809)
• Culture: America, Rhode Island, Newport, 18th century
• Type: Furniture and woodwork
• Technique: "Plum pudding" mahogany, red cedar, chestnut, white pine, brass
• Dimensions: Overall: 240 x 108 x 64.8 cm (94 1/2 x 42 1/2 x 25 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Furniture
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 2012.43

A detail from the museum

This desk and bookcase was likely made for Oliver Wolcott Sr., a signer of the Declaration of Independence and later governor of Connecticut.

Collection credit

Gift of Harvey Buchanan in memory of Penelope Draper Buchanan and Dorothy Tuckerman Draper

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. vol. 53 no. 02, (March/April 2013).
• Bidwell, Frederick E. and Leslie Cade. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art in association with New York, NY: Scala Arts Publishers, 2014.
• “A Walking Tour: The entire new museum wing by wing, with curators calling out a few favorite works in the collection.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 54, no. 1 (January/February 2014): 8-33.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.