raftsmen throughout the New World to copy it. Portuguese rococo sacristy chests are found in Brazil; Dutch bombe examples are found along the northern coast of South America; and many examples are found in Mexican cities. Although it is documented that Cuban sacristy chests were shipped throughout the Caribbean, it is not known if they were the prototypes for the Mexican and South American examples. In an article about the decorative arts of Mexico, David B. Warren has written:
“During the second half of the nineteenth century, the ubiquitous storage trunks began to be replaced by wardrobes and chests of drawers. The one shown … is unusual in that banks of large drawers are concealed behind a pair of doors that comprise the undulating façade. The origin of this motif in combination with conforming ogee bracket feet is not clear. It seems to come ultimately from Chinese furniture and may have been introduced to Mexico either directly from China, or through furniture imported from Holland, itself influenced by Chinese examples. The stylistic kinship with the undulating facades of the block front furniture that evolved in Newport, Rhode Island, is intriguing, but at the moment inexplicable.”
North American scholars claim that the block front originated in Newport, Rhode Island, in the 1760s with the cabinetmakers John Townsend (1732-1809) and John Goddard (1723-1785). However, research by R. Peter Mooz has placed the earliest known block front in Boston in the late 1730s. as serpentine block front sacristy chests were made in Cuba as early as the 1730s, the North American origin of the form seems dubious. An ingenious theory was put forth in 1928 by William Brownell Goodwin (1866-1950), who visited Havana and saw the sacristy chest in the cathedral. He wrote:
“My theory naturally is that John Townsend himself or John Goddard or both of them shortly after 1741 visited Havana for the purpose of choosing and selecting fine mahogany for their work, and at that time visited the Cathedral, saw this piece, and recognized the unusual quality of its workmanship and evolved the type known as the American Block Front.”
There are records of North America merchants visiting Cuba to buy mahogany for cabinetmaking. However, Goodwin’s theory antedates the discovery of the Boston block front furniture of the late 1730s. Mooz thinks it is “probable that Newport furniture designs, individual though they are, were originally drawn from precedents outside Newport. The form was based on blocking developed in Boston and the ornament may have been taken from French designs, but the creative genius that combined these elements and perfected the style was Newport’s alone.”
The hundreds of eighteenth-century sacristy chests of drawers in Cuba today remain a tribute to the skill and innovative sense of design of their anonymous makers. They serve as an impetus for further study of the confluence of cultures in colonial Cuba and how it affected the development of the tradition of craftsmanship on the island.
(2) Maria Luisa Lobo Montalvo, Havana: History and Architecture of a Romantic City, trans. Lorna Scott Fox (Monacelli Press, New York, 2000), p. 72.
(3) Sherry Johnson, The Social Transformation of Eighteenth-Century Cuba (University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 2001), p. 10.
(4) Symonds, “English Eighteenth Century Furniture Exports,” pp. 57, 59.
(5) Rafael Domenech Gallissa and Luis Perez-Bueno, Muebles antiquos espanoles/Antique Spanish Furniture, trans. Grace Hardendorff Burr (1921; Archive Press, New York, 1965), p. 20.
(6) David B. Warren, “The arts of viceregal Mexico, 1521-1821: A confluence of cultures,” The Magazine ANTIQUES, vol. 161, no. 4 (April 2002), p. 126.
(7) R. Peter Mooz, “The origins of Newport block-front furniture design,” The Magazine ANTIQUES, vol. 99, no. 6 (June 1971), p. 882.
(8) Quoted in “Speculations on the Rhode Island block-front in 1928,” comp. Wendell D. Garrett, ibid., p. 891.
(9) Mooz, “The origins of Newport block-front furniture design,” p. 886.
MICHAEL CONNORS is the author of Cuban Elegance published by Ha