Christic's: the Quincy family bombe chest of drawers highlights a sales of American furniture and decorative arts.(CURRENT and coming)

In spite of the faltering economy and the somewhat lackluster results of their major American paintings sales last month (only 58 percent of the lots offered at Christie's and 60 percent at Sotheby's were sold, compared to 76 percent at both places last year), the two auction houses have high hopes for their sales of American furniture and decorative arts. At Christie's the standout by far is the Quincy family plum-pudding mahogany bombe chest of drawers made in the Boston area about 1770. Bombe case furniture was rare even in its own time--extremely expensive to produce due to its labor-intensive construction and the size of the mahogany planks needed to from the bulges of the case and drawers. This chest--an exquisite example distinguished by the elegance of its curvilinear case, its vigorously carved claw-and-ball feet with particularly well-defined talons and knuckles, and its use of plum-pudding mahogany--appears to have been made in the same Boston shop as three very closely related chests in Historic Deerfield in Massachusetts, the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, and in a private collection. All four display a pronounced ...