Revisiting Taunton: Robert Crosman, Esther Stevens Brazer, and the changing interpretations of Taunton chests
| Author(s) | Gevalt, Emelie L. | |
| Date Accessioned | 2017-12-06T15:16:53Z | |
| Date Available | 2017-12-06T15:16:53Z | |
| Publication Date | 2017 | |
| SWORD Update | 2017-09-06T13:26:10Z | |
| Abstract | There are over two-dozen examples of “Taunton chests,” located in museums and private collections throughout the country. Though constructed simply, the chests are intricately decorated, featuring tenderly expressive painted designs that range from single trees-of-life to dazzling, complex compositions of multiple trees, birds, vines, berries, and blossoms. Due to the early work of pioneering antiques scholar Esther Stevens Brazer (1898-1945), these splendidly painted objects have historically been attributed to the hand of a single maker: Robert Crosman (1707-1799), a drum-maker and member of a family of craftsmen working in the eponymous town in southeastern Massachusetts from approximately 1727 to 1742. Since the time of Brazer’s seminal 1933 article, “The Tantalizing Chests of Taunton,” curators and scholars have analyzed selected chests, but an extensive consideration of the full group – expanded more than two-fold since the 1930s – has never been published. As a result, neither Brazer’s original findings nor her Colonial Revival viewpoint has been systematically addressed. Multiple questions remain about the chests: most notably, was Brazer correct in her attribution to Robert Crosman? Is there now further evidence to strengthen or perhaps refute her claims? Who, in fact, was Esther Stevens Brazer, and how might elements of her personal and cultural circumstances have influenced her scholarship and our subsequent understanding of the Taunton group? Finally, how can the chests’ changing interpretations over time inform our own present day understanding of these objects’ importance? This project will seek to answer these questions by undertaking a systematic examination of the surviving twenty-six Taunton chests, re-investigating the chests’ significance across an extended timeline by considering Brazer as both a secondary and primary source. Ultimately, as this thesis will show, Brazer’s attribution remains credible, with some of its weaknesses strengthened significantly by the consistency of the expanded body of Taunton chests and by the discovery of new evidence linking Crosman definitively to the cabinet-making trade. Nonetheless, a consideration of Brazer herself as a historical subject also reveals the extent to which her scholarship was influenced by personal and cultural proclivities. A re-investigation of Brazer’s work as a primary source emphasizes the shifts that have taken place in the interpretation of Taunton chests over the centuries, with twentieth-century owners casting the objects as symbols of a simpler time while leaving aside the chests’ original evocations, to the eighteenth-century eye, of abundance and sophisticated international taste. | en_US |
| Advisor | Lane, Joshua W. | |
| Advisor | Roeber, Catharine D. | |
| Degree | M.A. | |
| Program | University of Delaware, Winterthur Program in American Material Culture | |
| Unique Identifier | 1014021551 | |
| URL | http://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/21763 | |
| Language | en | |
| Publisher | University of Delaware | en_US |
| URI | https://search.proquest.com/docview/1958951369?accountid=10457 | |
| Keywords | Social sciences | en_US |
| Keywords | Communication and the arts | en_US |
| Keywords | Colonial revival | en_US |
| Keywords | Esther Stevens Brazer | en_US |
| Keywords | Painted furniture | en_US |
| Keywords | Robert Crosman | en_US |
| Keywords | Taunton | en_US |
| Title | Revisiting Taunton: Robert Crosman, Esther Stevens Brazer, and the changing interpretations of Taunton chests | en_US |
| Type | Thesis | en_US |