At the base of the Blue Hills in Milton, Massachusetts, lies the Davenport-Wakefield house, its stately Federal form providing a fitting setting for its treasure trove of decorative arts collections (Fig. 1). Prosperous Boston merchant Isaac Davenport (Fig. 2) constructed the high-style “country seat” in 1794. Built on his family’s ancestral lands just south of today’s Boston city limits, the property remained in the family’s hands for more than 210 years. Successive generations contributed to the collections of heirloom furnishings and possessions, preserving them as testaments to a proud family heritage. The broad scope of collections from the house (now an educational nonprofit organization operated as the Mary M. B. Wakefield Charitable Trust) includes fine furniture, paintings, needlework, ceramics, and silver from the 1770s through the twentieth century. These were unknown to decorative arts scholars until their discovery by consultants who evaluated them after the death of the last descendant-property owner, Mary M. B. Wakefield, in 2004.
