The Wethersfield area of Connecticut has been known for its distinctive carving traditions since the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when Peter Blin is credited with creating the chests known as the Sunflower group. This hanging wall box, made nearly one hundred years later at the turn of the nineteenth century, continues that tradition with its robustly carved surface. Its strong overall embellishment is crowned with a bold carving of a fierce American eagle–proud symbol of the young republic–emerging in relief from a recessed arched reserve carved directly into the wood. The back is made of a single piece of wood, and on the front are two pockets with applied front panels that display exuberant relief carvings of flowering stems, a footed urn of flowers, pinwheels, and the segmented rosettes familiar from other Connecticut River Valley furniture, decorative arts, and gravestones. Tradition maintains that the wall box descended in the Brainard family, which has a long history in Wethersfield and Hartford, Connecticut. A second, closely related example may also have come from a Connecticut family that moved to Mount Vernon, Maine.

Stacy C. Hollander, "Wall Box with Eagle and Floral Decoration," in American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 423.