EarlyAmericanCeramics.com: A Seventeenth Century Chest Once Owned by the Osborn Family in Salem Village

Friday, February 25, 2022

A Seventeenth Century Chest Once Owned by the Osborn Family in Salem Village

While visiting the Peabody Essex Museum yesterday in Salem, Massachusetts with my niece Alexis, we saw the museum's new exhibit The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming, where we were surprised to learn about this seventeenth century chest once owned by the Osborn family of Salem Village, circa 1680-1705. Our interest in this piece was a result of it being related to descendants of these Osborns, who established the well-known red earthenware business in neighboring South Danvers (Peabody), Massachusetts in the 1730s, which was largely influential throughout New England with spinoff family businesses in Peabody, at various locations in New Hampshire and a number of other potteries. The chest is attributed to the shop of James Symonds (1632-1714) in Salem.

Interestingly, the chest is documented as having been owned by William and Hannah Osborn, among other family members, although it was William and Hannah's grandson Joseph Osborn who originally established the family red earthenware enterprise in South Danvers, and possibly having trained with his brother Paul at Jonathan Haywayd's pottery in Beverly, Massachusetts.

For more information, see Martha Willoughby's article in the 2000 edition of American Furniture, titled, Patronage in Early Salem: The Symonds Shops and Their Customers.

Also - see my article written for the November 2017 issue of the New England Antiques Journal, titled, Digging Into the Peabody Potteries: Archaeology and Red Earthenware, as well as the book I wrote, The Moses B. Paige Company: The Last of the Peabody Potteries.

A Seventeenth Century Chest Once Owned by the Osborn Family in Salem Village