Sugar chests held precious commodity
By Diane Heilenman
About 20 years ago, Bob Noe traded a 1980 Oldsmobile with 150,000 miles on it for a Kentucky sugar press.
“I got the best of the transaction,” recalled Noe, of Lancaster, Ky. He and his wife, Norma, are among the top collectors of Kentucky antebellum furniture and decorative arts.
“For reasons I don’t know,” he said, “the Kentucky sugar chest is the piece most desired — not the most valuable — for most collectors.”
Sugar chests have “a strange aura,” agreed Robert Hicks, a music publisher in Nashville, Tenn., who has written definitively about Tennessee sugar chests for Antiques magazine.
Scott Erbes, decorative arts curator for the Speed Art Museum, explained: “It’s not necessarily the aesthetics. It has a lot to do with its cultural history. … But it is, certainly, to me and to collectors and to the general public, one of the most interesting furniture forms.”
Discover what inspires such regard when about 50 examples of sugar storage furniture from the turn of the 18th century and later go on view Tuesday at the Speed museum.
“For Safekeeping: The Kentucky Sugar Chest, 1790-1850” is the first exhibition devoted to Kentucky sugar presses, chests, desks, boxes and bureaus. Also on view are some of the tools of sugar handling during the time it was rare and expensive and was sold in molds and cones.
The sugar chests displayed include pieces from major collectors, including the Noes, selected by Clifton Anderson, a private antiques dealer for more than 30 years based in Anderson County, and Marianne Ramsey, a scholar of inlaid Kentucky furniture and associate professor of interior design at Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond.
Anderson and Ramsey are the major fieldworkers in the evolving arena of Kentucky fine furniture, said Erbes. “For Safekeeping: The Kentucky Sugar Chest, 1790-1850” is both a way to present their fieldwork and to encourage people to care about and take care of Kentucky’s material culture, he said.
“We (the Speed museum) have led the way the best we can in preserving Kentucky art, documenting Kentucky art and exhibiting Kentucky art. This is a commitment we feel strongly about, and certainly it is one of the keys to the museum’s identity, now and in the future.” (A museum Web site for people to record and research older Kentucky art is www.koar.com, Kentucky Online Arts Resource free image database.)
Sugar chests were most popular in Middle Tennessee, Kentucky and Southern Indiana, said Anderson. “Before 1820, I would think many of the wealthier, upper-middle-class homes had sugar chests, and probably middle-class homes, too. … The most ambitious examples were made in Kentucky.”
One of the exciting things about their research, Ramsey said, is that she and Anderson are beginning to be able to recognize individual hands and schools of cabinet-making. “In this exhibit we may have three pairs of sugar chests that appear to be by the same shop.”
They agree that the piece that may be the iconic Kentucky sugar chest is an inlaid piece owned by the Speed. Its quality was recognized early, said Anderson. “It sold at auction in, I think, 1923, for $100 at a time when the rest were selling for $5 or $10. It’s a superior example of Kentucky sugar chests.”
“Some of the real highlights of Kentucky sugar chests are in the exhibit,” said Ramsey.
“The selection (on view) is not necessarily representative of the entire sugar chest population,” cautioned Anderson, “but it is representative of better examples in terms of preservation, finish and … just beauty.”
Reporter Diane Heilenman can be reached at (502) 582-4682.
