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Edwin Thorn, Caleb Allen, Cornelius Kelley

 Edwin Thorn, Caleb Allen, Cornelius Kelley

© Memorial Hall Museum, Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association

In 1901, Dr. Edwin Thorn and Deerfield farmer Caleb Allen exhibited their acclaimed oak Bride's Chest during Deerfield's Old Home Days. The piece featured wrought-ironwork fashioned by the village blacksmith, Cornelius Kelley.

Originally, Caleb Allen and Edwin Thorn were introduced to furniture making through their efforts to restore old pieces. They soon wished to construct "new [furniture pieces] after old designs and in the same solid, honest manner."1 In addition their collaboratively-built Bride's Chest, Edwin Thorn and Caleb Allen individually made and exhibited in Deerfield a number of other Colonial Revival furniture pieces in the first decade of the twentieth century.

  1. Mary E. Allen, "Handicrafts in Old Deerfield," The Outlook, vol. 69, no. 9 (Nov. 2, 1901), 596.