This is one of two nearly identical painted chests that, according to oral history, were made for sisters who lived in adjacent homes on the same farm in Virginia. The single most remarkable aspect of these twin chests is the apparent design source for the center panel. In an ingenious two-dimensional interpretation of the three-dimensional form of part of a tall case clock, Johannes Spitler has stylized and rearranged the elements of a clock hood: broken-arch pediment, spire-and-ball finial, reeded plinth block, shell-shaped plinth support, and fan-patterned rosettes. Indeed, the Spitler-decorated clock in the collection of the Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum in Williamsburg, Virginia, has all these elements and may in fact have been Spitler's source of inspiration.

In all other ways this chest is a textbook specimen of Spitler chest design vocabulary and construction. Using his standard palette, motifs, were created with the aid of a compass and a straight-ruler. The ends of the chest are decorated with an overall pattern of tight swirls in blue on a white ground. The profile of the feet, which are dovetailed (as is the case itself), is of a configuration found on the majority of Spitler's chests. Although the paint on the lid is worn and only part of one white six-pointed star remains, one can deduce from the chest's mate that the complete lid design was originally a larger star flanked by two small stars on a blue ground.

Donald R. Walters, "Chest," in Stacy C. Hollander, American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001), 471.