The Dining Room

Among the Federal renovations in the dining room are the triple-sash windows, which led onto a piazza (since removed); the alcove; the graining on the closet door. and the fireplace surround. The latter was rediscovered in the attic and reinstalled in the restoration. See also the frontispiece. The fireboard is a copy of one from the Fowler House of 1808 in Danversport. -Massachusetts (in the collection of Historic New England). The French (or possibly Russian) marble-topped pier table in the alcove, 1810--1825, is mahogany and mahogany-veneer with gilt-bronze mounts. On the table French porcelain and gilt- and silvered-bronze candlesticks, 1800-1825, flank a gilt-bronze shelf clock with a figure of George Washington, c. 1800. It is stamped "Dubue, Rue Michel-le- Comte No. 33 à Paris." The set of twelve mahogany and mahogany-veneered side chairs, c. 1830, was probably bought in Boston by Barnabas Hedge (1764-1840) of Plymouth, Massachusetts. Both paintings in the room were brought to the United States by the 1830's and typify Boston taste of the period: above the mantel hangs Classical Landscape signed and dated "P-J Boquet 1816," possibly by Pierre Jean Bocquet (1751-1817); above the pier table is Blind Man's Bluff, in the manner of Jean Baptiste Pater (1695-1736), late eighteenth century, in a frame probably by John Doggett (1780-1857) of Roxbury. The brussels carpet was reproduced from point papers of 1800-1810 in the collection of the manufacturer, Woodward and Grosvenor of Kidderminster, England.