Charles I East Devon chest

This chest represents an English version of the basic structural and ornamental format employed by the Dennis shop in New England for upper-mid to high economic level joined chests. A three-panel facade is carved with de Vries-derived strapwork con the top rail, adorst s-scrolls on the bottom rail, muntins, and faces of the stiles and stem, and a stem and flowerhead arrangement and/or lozenge motifs filling the panels. This distinctive configuration of carving can be seen as a simplified and economically downscaled version of cat. 4. The chest is also among the earliest English examples on which appear two motifs considered diagnostic of the Dennis shop: foliated crosses contained within lozenge borders and sequences of alternating, adorst s-scrolls of a distinctive form which appear with remarkably little variation on the majority of seventeenth-century Exeter and Exeter-derived joinery. The cleats tapered in thickness and height from front to back and secured with large pins which fully penetrate the surfaces of cleat and lid on both sides – are the standard form used on later Exeter and Ipswich joined chests

The chests overall measurements and the proportions of individual framing members prefigure the appearance of Dennis shop and seventeenth-century Exeter chests. This chest and most Exeter joined movable furniture constructed subsequent to it suffer from the effects of the depletion of the Citys local timber resources at Duryard Manor. Despite is large proportions, all framing members are quite scant. Those at the back the less publicly visible facade are rife with sapwood, wane, and other imperfections.

Condition Notes

Period repairs to back bottom rail.