# Desk and Bookcase > Unidentified Newport (or Providence) cabinetmaking shop, within the Goddard-Townsend tradition - 1760-90 (Metropolitan Museum's own catalogue bracket for the piece). Brock Jobe's 2001 study captions this specific example about 1760-1770, a narrower range not reconciled with the Museum's bracket in any source consulted. > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/goddard-townsend/goddard-townsend-desk-bookcase-met/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-26 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unidentified Newport (or Providence) cabinetmaking shop, within the Goddard-Townsend tradition - **Date:** 1760-90 (Metropolitan Museum's own catalogue bracket for the piece). Brock Jobe's 2001 study captions this specific example about 1760-1770, a narrower range not reconciled with the Museum's bracket in any source consulted. - **Medium:** Mahogany, with chestnut, white pine, yellow pine, yellow poplar (tulip poplar) and cedar as secondary woods; brass hardware - **Dimensions:** 99 1/8 x 44 1/8 x 25 3/4 in. (251.8 x 112.1 x 65.4 cm) - **Object type:** Furniture - **Period:** American, eighteenth century - **Current location:** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on permanent view in Gallery 753, The American Wing - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary A nine-foot mahogany desk and bookcase made in Newport, Rhode Island sometime between about 1760 and 1790, one of roughly nine surviving examples of the block-and-shell form that scholars treat as the summit of American colonial furniture-making. The Metropolitan Museum has owned it since 1915, when it was purchased with the Rogers Fund from the estate of Richard Canfield, the New York casino operator and Whistler collector who is the only documented owner before the Museum.No maker's name survives on it. The construction-based study that finally moved this group away from a single loose attribution to John Goddard can only place this particular desk in a subgroup of unidentified Newport hands, naming Christopher Townsend and Job Townsend as candidates without confirming either. It is not the desk that Christie's sold at record price in 1989, and it is not the Nicholas Brown desk this archive holds separately: those facts, and that price, belong to a different, still privately owned object.What is documented is the object itself: the tripartite blocked front and its carved shells, the cubbyholes and drawers behind the bookcase doors where a Newport merchant kept his papers, and a plain institutional sentence on the Museum's own label connecting this kind of monumental workstation to the Rhode Island trade in enslaved people that paid for it. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1760-c. 1790** Unidentified original owner, Newport or Providence, Rhode Island `[unknown]` (manufacture) Made by an unidentified Newport (or possibly Providence) cabinetmaking shop within the Goddard-Townsend tradition. The Metropolitan Museum dates the piece 1760-90; Brock Jobe's 2001 study narrows it to about 1760-1770. No maker's label, signature or documented commission survives, and the first owner is not named in any source consulted. - **c. 1790-c. 1880s** Unrecorded owner or owners `[unknown]` (gap) Nothing is documented about how the desk left its original household or how it moved through the early-to-mid nineteenth century before it is first recorded in Richard Canfield's collection. This is a real gap and is recorded as one, not bridged with a guess. - **c. 1880s-1914** Richard Canfield (1855-1914), New York `[documented]` (private ownership) Canfield, the New York and Newport casino operator and art collector, owned the desk before his death. Brock Jobe's study places his acquisition of it 'possibly in Providence,' at roughly the period, the 1880s, that the collector-dealer Charles Pendleton was assembling his own Newport desk-and-bookcase in Providence. The exact date, seller and price of Canfield's purchase are not recorded in any source consulted. - **1914-1915** Estate of Richard Canfield, negotiated by his attorney Luke Vincent Lockwood `[documented]` (estate sale) Canfield died in December 1914 (see open questions for the 1914/1915 discrepancy in the Museum's own note). Lockwood, a practicing lawyer and, separately, the author of the pioneering 1901 survey Colonial Furniture in America, negotiated the sale of the desk from Canfield's estate to the Metropolitan Museum. - **1915-present** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (acquisition) Purchased with the Rogers Fund, 1915. Accession number 15.21.2. On permanent view in Gallery 753, The American Wing, as of 2026. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - NO AUCTION SALE OF THIS OBJECT IS KNOWN. This desk passed from Richard Canfield's estate to the Metropolitan Museum by a negotiated purchase with the Rogers Fund in 1915, not at public auction, and no price for that transaction was found in any source consulted. It must not be confused with the desk-and-bookcase made for the Providence merchant Nicholas Brown, a different, still privately owned example of this same form, which Christie's New York sold at public auction on 3 June 1989 for a reported USD 12.1 million, then a world record for a piece of furniture. That sale, its buyer and its price belong to the Nicholas Brown desk, not to the object in this record, and are covered separately in this archive's own record on that desk. ## Literature - 1984, Michael Moses, Master Craftsmen of Newport: The Townsends and Goddards (MMI Americana Press). The standard connoisseurship-based reference for the group. Its specific treatment of this desk was not verified for this record; flagged for direct consultation before further claims are drawn from it. - 2001, Brock Jobe, 'The Lisle Desk-and-Bookcase: A Rhode Island Icon,' American Furniture 2001 (Chipstone Foundation). The construction-based reassessment that identifies at least four or five distinct Newport shops behind the nine known desk-and-bookcases and places this desk, unattributed, in one subgroup. - 1985, Morrison H. Heckscher, American Furniture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Late Colonial Period, Vol. II, The Queen Anne and Chippendale Styles (Metropolitan Museum of Art). The Museum's own catalogue of this collection area; description and citation verified, full 384-page text not read for this record. - 2005, Morrison H. Heckscher, John Townsend: Newport Cabinetmaker, exhibition catalogue (Metropolitan Museum of Art, distributed by Yale University Press). ## Open questions - Who made this desk? No maker's name survives on it, and Brock Jobe's construction-based study can only place it in a subgroup of unidentified Newport shops, naming Christopher Townsend and Job Townsend as unconfirmed candidates among several. - Where, when and from whom did Richard Canfield acquire it? Jobe places the purchase only approximately, possibly in Providence, around the 1880s; no bill of sale, dealer's name or exact date was found in any source consulted. - Did Richard Canfield die in 1914 or 1915? Independent biographical sources give 11 December 1914; the Metropolitan Museum's own provenance note for this object reads 'died 1915.' The conflict is not resolved here. - Is the desk properly dated to 1760-90 or narrowed to 1760-1770? The Metropolitan Museum uses the broader bracket across its Newport holdings; Brock Jobe's 2001 study captions this specific example with the narrower range. Neither source explains its reasoning against the other. - Whose initials are Z H, A M and P? Incised and inked inside the desk, no source consulted proposes an identification for any of them. - What did the Metropolitan Museum pay for the desk in 1915? No purchase price for this transaction was found in any source consulted. - What does Michael Moses's 1984 study Master Craftsmen of Newport say specifically about this example? The book is the standard connoisseurship reference for the group; its treatment of this desk was not verified for this record and should be checked directly before further claims are added. ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection object page for 'Desk and bookcase,' accession 15.21.2 (Overview, Signatures/Inscriptions/Markings, and Provenance tabs read directly). - [2] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Collection API record for object ID 3141 (accession number, credit line, medium, dimensions, gallery, public-domain and highlight-object flags). - [3] Brock Jobe, 'The Lisle Desk-and-Bookcase: A Rhode Island Icon,' American Furniture 2001, Chipstone Foundation. Source for the nine-piece census, the Canfield desk's subgroup and dating, Canfield's approximate acquisition and Lockwood's role in the 1915 sale, the Goddard inscription and its unproven status, and the exclusion of John Townsend from the group. - [4] Nicholas C. Vincent, 'American Furniture, 1730-1790: Queen Anne and Chippendale Styles,' Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2009. Source for the 'no known parallel in European furniture or contemporary furniture books' claim, illustrated with this object's own accession number, and for the Caribbean mahogany trade context. - [5] Metropolitan Museum of Art, press release, 'John Townsend: Newport Cabinetmaker,' 7 March 2005. Source for John Townsend's dates, his practice of signing and dating his work, and Morrison Heckscher's curatorial framing of the attribution problem across the family group. - [6] Metropolitan Museum of Art, MetPublications listing for Morrison H. Heckscher, American Furniture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Late Colonial Period, Vol. II (1985). Description and bibliographic details only; full catalogue text not read for this record. - [7] Wikipedia, 'Richard Albert Canfield.' TERTIARY. Source for Canfield's dates, gambling career, art collecting and cause and date of death. Flagged for replacement with a primary obituary or biography. - [8] New England Historical Society, 'The Hidden Treasures of Newport Cabinetmaker John Goddard.' TERTIARY. Source for John Goddard's birth, family, apprenticeship, marriage and death. This publication has misdated the 1989 sale elsewhere and is used here only for biographical detail, flagged for replacement with a scholarly source. - [9] Whistler Paintings Catalogue, University of Glasgow, entry YMSM 547, 'Portrait of Richard A. Canfield.' Source for the commission date, sitting history, the painting's status as Whistler's last completed portrait, and its nickname 'His Reverence.' - [10] Wikimedia Commons file page for the Metropolitan Museum's desk and bookcase, accession 15.21.2. Licence verified at fetch time via the Commons API: LicenseShortName 'CC0'. - [11] Wikimedia Commons file page for James McNeill Whistler's 'Portrait of Richard A. Canfield' (1901-1903). Licence verified at fetch time via the Commons API: LicenseShortName 'Public domain'. - [12] Wikimedia Commons file page for a high chest attributed to John Townsend, National Gallery of Art, Washington. Licence verified at fetch time via the Commons API: LicenseShortName 'CC0'. - [13] Wikimedia Commons file page for a card table attributed to John Goddard, National Gallery of Art, Washington. Licence verified at fetch time via the Commons API: LicenseShortName 'CC0'. - [14] Deseret News (Associated Press), '1760s desk set sells for record $12.1 million,' 4 June 1989. Source, independently fetched for this record, confirming the 1989 Christie's sale was of the Nicholas Brown desk, a different object from the one in this record, at USD 12.1 million. - [15] Wikipedia, 'Luke Vincent Lockwood.' Source for Lockwood's dates, his career as a lawyer, and his 1901 book Colonial Furniture in America. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.