The collector's whatnot : $b a compendium, manual, and syllabus of information and advice on all subjects appertaining to the collection of antiques, both ancient and not so ancientTarkington, Booth
General
The collector's whatnot : $b a compendium, manual, and syllabus of information and advice on all subjects appertaining to the collection of antiques, both ancient and not so ancient
Tarkington, Booth
Antiques -- Humor
At any rate, Isaiah Thrasher was a descendant of the one or more
members of the Marjoribanks family who came to America on the
Mayflower; and he inherited from his ancestor a number of rare old
pieces of English furniture, including a very fine old chest. The top
of this chest was missing, the feet were worn away, and several of
the boards had been removed, stolen or lost from the front and sides.
Nevertheless it was a very fine old chest, and very rare. Probably
not more than twenty-eight or thirty of these chests, all told, were
brought over in the Mayflower. He also owned an extremely fine cradle
of the same general type as that which is said to have sheltered
Peregrine White, who attained fame by being born among the furniture of
the Mayflower, though there are some who say that some of the furniture
had to be moved out before Peregrine could get in. This cradle was of
wicker and had probably been made in the Orient, whence it was brought
to Holland, and there picked up, just before the Mayflower sailed, by
one of the Marjoribanks family who had a fine eye for odd pieces of
furniture. Another of his possessions was a beautiful turned chair
with an unusual number of spindles. It had so many spindles that any
one who sat in it could easily spend two or three hours counting the
spindles. This came over in the Mayflower, and was unusually rare,
owing to the fact that most of the Mayflower tourists eschewed chairs
and stuck to larger and more space-filling pieces of furniture, like
desks, whatnots, highboys, lowboys, clocks, bedsteads, and chests. Most
of them were evidently content to sit on the floor or lean against a
highboy, when not asleep or in motion.
The mere fact that Isaiah Thrasher inherited these rare and beautiful
pieces of furniture from his ancestors filled him with a love for the
good and the beautiful. When, therefore, he moved from Plymouth to
Sunkset in 1742 in search of more religious freedom than obtained in
Plymouth, the farmhouse that he built conformed in every way to the
best standards of Colonial architecture. The doorway was perfect; all
of the beams were hand-hewn of the finest oak; the balustrades on
the staircases were as gracefully curved as the lines of a woman’s
throat; the fine corner cupboards throughout the house were gems of the
joiner’s art; the fireplaces were generous and hospitable, flanked by
settles, brick ovens, and cupboards of pumpkin pine, and duly decorated
with spits, cranes, pot-hooks, trammels, trivets, and sturdy andirons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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