Case furniture of the Chapin school, 1775-1800.(Cover Story)

Eliphalet Chapin of East Windsor, Connecticut, has, since the 1920s, been the lower Connecticut River valley's best-known, and generally considered its most gifted, eighteenth-century cabinet-maker. Born in Somers (then in Massachusetts), Chapin was trained in the century-old local craft tradition based on the English guild system that evolved in the valley following its settlement in 1635. (1) He spent the years from 1767 to 1771 as a journeyman in an unidentified Philadelphia shop (or shops), where he assimilated that city's sophisticated rococo design and local construction techniques. Bringing them back to his native region, he successfully abstracted the Philadelphia ...