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Home Room from the Hart House, Ipswich, Massachusetts

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Room from the Hart House, Ipswich, Massachusetts

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Title/Caption	Room from the Hart House, Ipswich, Massachusetts
Date of Work	1680
Description of View	Made in: America, Northeast, Massachusetts, Ipswich. A few months after his marriage to Sarah Norton on February 2, 1678, Samuel Hart cut the first timber for the new house they would share in Ipswich, Massachusetts. A second-generation New Englander, Samuel had inherited land and a house from his father Thomas Hart in 1674. For many years, scholars believed that the Metropolitan Museum's room came from this earlier house. However, recent scientific evidence using tree-ring dating�a technique called dendrochronology�has suggested that the house was actually completed around 1680. This later house was probably not dramatically different from the one inherited from the elder Hart. Nor was it dramatically different from those Thomas Hart had left behind in England in 1634. Essentially medieval in plan and decoration, Samuel and Sarah's house probably originally consisted of a first-floor hall and an upstairs hall-chamber. As the family grew wealthier and more numerous, additional rooms were probably clustered around the chimney stack. Both the plan and decoration of Thomas Hart's hall are typical of seventeenth-century English architecture. The decoration of this room reflected the skill of the housewright, who relied on relatively simple tools to embellish the frame of the building. The decorative effect relies upon the rhythmic contrast of the dark exposed structural members against the whitewashed plaster walls. The primary timbers�the massive summer beam that spans the center of the room, and the girts that frame the tops of the walls�are embellished with chamfered edges that terminate at the ends with decorative lamb's-tongue stops. Casement windows allow in light; the small size of the panes reflects the cost and difficulty of producing larger pieces of glass.The room's decorative focus is the completely paneled fireplace wall.
Technique/Process	furniture
Materials/Medium	Wood
Period	Eighteenth century
Culture	American
Location.Current Site/City & Country	New York (N.Y.)
Location.Current Repository	Metropolitan Museum of Art
Repository Notes	Munsey Fund, 1936
Subject	Decorative arts Furniture Sideboards tables Chairs Fireplaces
Publisher	The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Publisher.Location	New York (N.Y.)
Credit Line	Image [copyright] The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Reference Number	Met-06186
Collection Title	Decorative arts, furnishings and equipment (Art and Art History Department images)
Collection Information	Collection administered by Visual Resources manager, Architecture Library (402) 472-1193
Copyright Information	http://contentdm.unl.edu:2000/ah_copyright.html

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Home Room from the Hart House, Ipswich, Massachusetts

Room from the Hart House, Ipswich, Massachusetts

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