A late form of a chest with two drawers is shown in Figure 40. The chest of drawers had already become popular, and the front of the chest part has two blind drawers to give the appearance of a four-drawer chest of drawers. The top lifts up in the same manner as the chests. These pieces, as is this one, are usually made of pine and are found sometimes with the single and sometimes with the double arched moulding about the drawers and with the early drop or engraved handles. They sometimes have bracket and sometimes ball feet.

Figure 40. Chest with two drawers, 1710-20.

After much study of the inventories the writer is convinced that it is impossible to place the date of a chest in any exact year, for the records covering the century between 1633 and 1733 vary only slightly in the descriptions and valuations given. Practically the only way to determine the date is by the character of the decoration used.

The examples here illustrated represent the better quality of chests in use during the seventeenth century, because, as is natural, only the best of the chests would have been considered worth preserving. Their values, as given in the inventories, vary from one shilling to seventy shillings, the purchasing power of money being at that time about five times what it is to-day. At Plymouth, in 1634, "a great oak chest with lock and key 8s"; Salem, 1644, "4 chests £1"; 1673, "a wainscott chest 8s"; Plymouth, 1682, "a wainscot chest £1"; Philadelphia, 1709, "a wainscot chest £1"; in the same year, "a black walnut chest £2 5s"; Providence, 1680, "a great chest with a drawer is"; New York, 1697, "1 black nutt chest with two black feet £2 10s"; at Yorktown, Virginia, 1674, "2 chests £1 2s"; 1675, "3 chests 8s"; and the highest price noted, at New York, 1682, "1 chest with drawers £3 10s." Very many chests both North and South inventoried simply as chests are valued at from one to ten shillings. There is also mention in the inventories of iron-bound chests, one at Salem, in 1684, valued at five shillings. The writer knows of two such chests, both of Norwegian pine, in trunk shape with rounded tops; one is bound with wrought-iron bands about four inches wide, in the tulip pattern, and has initials and the date 1707, also in wrought-iron; the other has finely wrought bands in a Spanish design. Cedar chests are noted occasionally, valued at about thirty shillings; they were probably plain, as no description whatever is given of them.

It may be well to review briefly the facts which we have observed in connection with the examples of chests here described. First, as to the wood. Most of the English chests are entirely of oak; most of the American-made ones had the top, the back, and the bottoms of both chest and drawers made of pine. No unfailing rule can, however, be given, for the writer has seen chests, undoubtedly made abroad, which have pine used in their construction, and, on the other hand, American pieces made throughout of American oak.

The chests appear to have been mainly of three kinds - those made with all-over carving; those with carved panels, further decorated with the turned pieces; and the panelled ones. There is every reason to think that the all-over carving is the oldest, but chests of this style continued to be made long after the fashion of adding the turned ornaments became general. The carving on American-made chests is, as a rule, very shallow - what is known as peasant carving. The English carving is generally more in relief and not so crude in execution. The fine relief carving, such as is seen on Continental furniture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was entirely beyond the powers of the American makers. The size of chests varied from eighteen inches in height when without drawers to forty-eight inches when with three drawers. The length varies from about thirty to sixty inches. They were almost always furnished with a small compartment, or till, at one end near the top. All the oak dusts were made in the most substantial manner; the oak forming the frame and the sides of the drawers is about one and a quarter inches in thickness.

There has been much discussion by those interested in the subject as to whether most of the chests were imported or made in this country. This must DC decided mainly by an examination of the woods. The English oak used is of two varieties - live-oak and swamp-oak - the former of a rich brown colour and fine grained; the swamp-oak with a long grain much like the American ash, and tending to flake with the grain as does the ash. The American white-oak is a rich golden brown with a coarser grain, which in the quarter is so highly figured as to distinguish it at once from the English live-oak. It keeps its rich golden colour with age, while the English grows darker without the golden tinge. American oak, however, when exposed to the weather, loses much of its golden colour, and it is by no means easy to distinguish it from English oak which has been subjected to the same conditions.

Chests continued to be mentioned in the inventories until the last of the eighteenth century; after 1710 they are frequently referred to as "old." They probably ceased to be made to any extent after 1730.