Furniture Inside Out: The Townsend Desk

In the next edition of our virtual Furniture Inside Out series, join us as we explore a special 18th century mahogany desk in the Whitehorne House Museum collection. Furniture maker and researcher Jeffrey Greene will show us what makes the piece a “typical” Newport desk and what features make it unique—as well as what the desk can tell us about its makers and original owners.

[augustwest]

Some of those marks on backs of the drawers are reference marks. As in square to this face.
Very important when making drawer boxes that are square

[BossCrunk]

Would desperately love to know how long it took the shop to make that piece.

[billmactiernan]

Have you ever heard of the term "factory second"? When this piece doesn't even make it to factory third. Any decent cabinet maker of the 18th century would have planed down the front of the sides and covered the filled in dovetails with a veneer. Second; the drawer construction (although typical of Newport) with bottoms nailed on cross grained is guaranteed to split.