Very Rare William and Mary Walnut Slant-Front Desk, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Circa 1730

Philip Bradley, Downingtown, Pennsylvania.

With its serpentine-shaped apron and turned ball feet, this slant-front desk is one of four known examples of its form. A desk in the collection of Winterthur Museum is crafted from mahogany and is the only example with its original feet. It may have been originally owned by Philadelphia silversmith, Joseph Richardson and is illustrated in Cathryn J. McElroy, “Furniture in Philadelphia: The First Fifty Years,” Winterthur Portfolio 13: American Furniture and Its Makers, ed. Ian M.G. Quimby, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press for The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1979), p. 75, fig. 15.¹ Another mahogany is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and illustrated by Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley, American Furniture 1650-1840: Highlights from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020), p. 45, no. 8.² The last directly related desk is in the collection of Yale University and illustrated in Gerald W. R. Ward, American Case Furniture in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 1988), pp. 289, 292, 294–95, no. 152.  A tangentially related walnut desk is in the collection of Wright’s Ferry Mansion and illustrated in Elizabeth Meg Schaefer, Joe K. Kindig III and Philip Zimmerman, Wright’s Ferry Mansion: The Collection, (Columbia, PA: The von Hess Foundation, 2005), pp. 116-7, no. 36.

¹ The desk was also illustrated in Wallace Nutting, Furniture Treasury, (New York: MacMillian, 1928), no. 670; American Art Association Inc, New York, Colonial Furniture: The Superb Collection of the Late Howard Reifsnyder, April 27, 1929, lot 686.
² Additional information is also available in Jack Lindsey entry, Early American Furniture and a Wax Work Sconce (1650-1775): Gifts for the Philadelphia Museum of Art from the Collection of Anne H. and Frederick Vogel III, ed. Gerald W. R. Ward and Frederick Vogel III, (Milwaukee, WI: Anne H. and Frederick Vogel III Collection of Early American Furniture and Decorative Arts, 2000), pp. 24-29, no. 5.