| Until 1982 the Dennis/Searle shop tradition was the only widely acknowledged seventeenth century Essex County joinery shop. In 1982 catalog entries for a groundbreaking exhibition of seventeenth century New England material culture, New England Begins, postulated that a table and one or two artifacts with provenance from Newbury, MA were produced in the previously little known Jacques shop. Subsequent entries attributed a chamber table with distinct type turnings to the Symonds' shop of Salem, MA and a cupboard to the Emery shop of Newbury, MA. In 1985, "The Emery Attribution" suggested that the cupboard belonged to a group of twenty-nine artifacts that share enough structural and ornamental features to be associated with one another. All were assigned an Emery shop attribution.;This paper examines the twenty-nine examples of furniture included in "The Emery Attribution." The purpose of the examination is to determine if the construction of numerous chests-of-drawers, cupboards, boxes, tables, etc reveal a group of unusual and related features that demonstrate that the furniture was produced in a single shop tradition. (Abstract shortened by UMI.). |
