AFA 22nd Anniversary

2022 Antiques & Fine Art 79 Valuables cabinet, James Symonds (1633–1714), Salem, Mass., 1679. Oak, maple, iron, and paint. H.16½, W 17, D. 9½ in. Museum purchase, made possible by anony- mous donors, 2000 (138011). Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum. Photo by Dennis Helmar. This cabinet is remarkable for its history of ownership, design, and survival. Salem’s premier seventeenth-century joiner James Symonds arranged the applied half-spindles, decorative moldings, and S-scrolls in orderly geometric patterns. These choices expressed a preference for the English design style known as Mannerism and reflect a transfer of European taste to an early American colonial settlement. The carved initials “JBP” commemorate the 1679 wedding of the cabinet’s first owners, Joseph and Bathsheba Pope, Quakers living in Salem Village, now Danvers, Massachusetts. The Popes gained notoriety thirteen years after their wedding, when their testimonies during the Salem witch trials led to the conviction and execution of three innocent people—Rebecca Nurse, Martha Cory, and John Proctor.