LABELED BY DAVIS HALL (1828-1905), NANTUCKET, MASSACHUSETTS, LATE 19TH CENTURY

Marked by both their maker and early, if not first, owner, this set of baskets are well-documented examples of a celebrated American craft. Renowned for his refined workmanship, Davis Hall (1828-1905) was one of the innovators of the Lightship basket form and was one of the makers who served on the South Shoal Lightship during the latter nineteenth century (Charles H. Carpenter, Jr. and Mary Grace Carpenter, The Decorative Arts and Crafts of Nantucket (New York, 1987), p. 193; David H. Wood, The Lightship Baskets of Nantucket (Nantucket, Massachusetts, 1994), pp. 16, 26, 35). Made in the nineteenth century, the baskets were owned by Rebecca C. (Blair) Ames (1838-1903), the wife and then widow of Frederick Lothrop Ames (1835-1893), a successful businessman once hailed as the richest man in Massachusetts. The couple resided at their Boston home on the corner of Commonwealth Avenue and Dartmouth Street and their country estate in North Easton, Massachusetts ("F.L. Ames's Sudden Death," The New York Times, 14 September 1893, available online; 1900 US Federal Census records; William L. Chaffin, History of the Town of Easton, Mass. (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1886), p. 754).