ON VIEW

The Dunlaps of the Merrimack Valley region constituted New Hampshire's most acclaimed dynasty of furniture makers. The reputation is based on the survival of an astonishing collection of business records and drawings that document two generations of work by the Dunlap family from its origins in the 1760s through the nineteenth century. More important, the Dunlaps' furniture is the standard by which American regional furniture is measured. Few shop traditions anywhere produced so much furniture of such originality and inventiveness.

The Dunlap school originated with Major John Dunlap (1746-1792), who began work in Goffstown around 1768 and over the next decade directed the work of several apprentices, including his youngest brother, Lieutenant Samuel Dunlap. Both John and Samuel were general practitioners who alternated between designing, building, and repairing houses; painting, carving, and turning; and making chests, chairs, and other items from window sashes and bread troughs to drumsticks and gun stocks. None of these forms was produced in great quantity, which partially explains why common details and elements vary among related objects. John Dunlap's account book records the production of fewer than four chests per year during the 1770s, hardly the image of mass-production.

Lieutenant Samuel Dunlap is the most likely candidate to have made the chest shown, in part because of its history of ownership in Weare, New Hampshire, a town only nine miles from Henniker, where Samuel worked. After training with his brother John, Samuel moved to Henniker. He was a more prolific furniture maker, producing more than three hundred objects during the 1790s. He employed journeymen and apprentices almost constantly. Following his move to Salisbury, New Hampshire, in 1797, Samuel continued to make furniture. In this chest, skill, patronage, and inventiveness converged to create one of the most spectacular and monumental examples of American regional furniture.

With its fans, Gothic S-scrolls, and curved cabriole legs, the chest might ordinarily be assigned a date as early as 1775. But there is no evidence that the towering and resplendently carved chests for which the Dunlaps are famous were produced any earlier than 1780. This version, which includes cut nails in its construction, either was made late in the career of Lieutenant Samuel Dunlap or is the work of one of the Dunlaps' many journeymen and apprentices. In any event, it was probably made during the 1790s. Recent scholarship has noted the persistence of Baroque-style furniture in interior New England as late as 1810.

The chest features a boldly executed example of a motif-the "flowered ogee" molding-that is one of the signature characteristics of the Dunlap school. The piece suggests a patron with an appetite for spectacle. The cornice is replete with Dunlap features, giving the chest a whimsical and monumental character. Fans, plumes, diagonal hatchwork, and compound moldings with dentils make this one of the most theatrical crowns in American furniture. The base or frame is similarly ornamented with expansive Gothic S-scrolls and compressed legs with exaggerated knee returns. The distinguishing features are not confined to ornamentation. The drawer fronts bear deep kerf marks, used in fastening the dovetailed sides to the front. The base, which is detachable, is assembled with massive bracing. The drawer arrangement is deceptive. Although the lower case appears to contain five drawers, it actually has only two; the top two are one and the bottom three are one. False fronts were designed to accentuate style and ostentation. This feature, although common enough in rural work, was rarely taken to such extremes. An added dimension of the Dunlap style involves the uses of painted finish. Here, the figured maple is so striking it is hard to imagine coating it with paint. The chest was ruthlessly stripped, however, and its hardware replaced during the 1930s. Microscopic analysis of the finish has not been undertaken, but would probably reveal evidence of a stained or painted finish. The Dunlaps not only stained their maple furniture to resemble mahogany, but offered other treatments to provide chromatic luster. Most intriguing of all is evidence of a chest-on-chest at the New Hampshire Historical Society with a multicolored pediment, rendered green, gilt, and mahogany. As spectacular as the Dunlap work appears now, it was without doubt even more so when new.

WNH and KB

REFERENCES

Charles S. Parsons. The Dunlaps & Their Furniture. Ex. cat. Currier Gallery of Art, 1970. Pp. 1-74.

Philip Zea and Donald A. Dunlap. The Dunlap Cabinetmakers. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994.