CONCORD, MASS. -- Cummings Davis (1816-1896), as curator David F. Wood notes in his introduction to The Concord Museum: Decorative Arts From A New England Collection, moved to this seat of New England antiquarianism in July, 1850, a few months after the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

In a city sustained by its pride in the past, Davis, a "refreshment saloon" owner and one of the first collectors of American decorative arts, not long afterwards began gathering artifacts with interesting local histories. In what amounts to remarkable tenure, the collection has been continuously on view since before the Civil War.

"Looked at Mr Davis's museum," wrote Henry D. Thoreau in 1860. Concord's most famous resident is today represented in the holdings by, appropriately, a simple standing desk present at his utopian experiment and the discarded fragment of a Chinese bed. In Walden, the proto-minimalist had written of scavenging second-hand furniture from the village.

By 1886, Davis's 2,000 object trove had been transferred to the Concord Antiquarian Society. Moved to the Reuben Brown house a year later, it was reinstalled between 1887-90, and again in 1907, in one of the first exercises in period-room display.

Explaining his motives, Davis told the Boston Transcript in 1870, "Whatever belongs to the remote past has an unspeakable charm for me." Others were equally beguiled. Wallace Nutting loved the Cummings Davis collection, photographing it in 1912. House Beautiful and The Magazine Antiques illustrated it in the 1920s and 1930s, and Esther Singleton and Alice Van Leer Carrick rhapsodized about Concord in the first books on collecting.

Admired and studied for a century and a half, the collection itself thus "became an artifact of the way it was formed," says Wood. In its sheer age it is a late Twentieth Century vestige of the Colonial Revival, distinct from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's American Wing, formed in the 1920s, or Helen and Helen Flynt's Deerfield, developed in the 1940s, to mention two other collections reflective of their eras.

"However it happened," says Wood, "the collection was a sleeper. It seemed a good time to catch up with a catalog." Following his 1889 visit to the Concord Antiquarian Society, George Sheldon, founder of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association in Deerfield, had recommended that Cummings Davis's recollections be committed to paper before it was too late. It was 85 years before the resulting catalog of 1911 was updated.

Asked why not, Wood stops to think. "It was an expensive proposition," he explains. "It's hard getting money for research, and not so easy getting it for publication." But the project struck a chord with many. Four years ago, the National Endowment For The Arts was asked to fund initial research. Publication costs were covered by a second NEA grant, augmented by contributions from The Chipstone Foundation, Northeast Auctions, Wayne Pratt, Inc., Skinner, Christie's and a few others, plus gifts from over 100 individual friends of the museum. Of the trade's support in particular, the curator says, "their affirmation was wonderful and gratifying. These guys are not afraid of new information, and that is impressive."

Wood invited some of New England's leading furniture scholars to participate in the project. "If I knew it all I would have done it," explains the amused curator, who arrived at the Concord Museum ten years ago, via the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Boston University, where he was a student.

As it happens, the experts were almost as well acquainted with the Concord Museum as early collectors had been. "It was a matter of drawing up a list of who would be good for each topic. Brock Jobe knew the Eighteenth Century stuff, Robert Trent's master thesis was on Middlesex County furniture, Phil Zea had just done the clock book with Robert Chenney, and David Barquist knew mirrors." Nancy Goyne Evans of Winterthur had recently published her long-awaited research on Windsors; Gerald W.R. Ward of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, had written extensively on furniture and silver; Marisa Morra had trained in textiles; and wood expert Bruce Hoadley "stayed enthusiastic even if all he had to work with was cherry, white pine and the occasional hophornbeam." Add to that Wood's own expertise, as well as that of photographer David Bohl and graphic designer David Ford, and the project seemed sure to succeed.

Far from spotlighting the celebrities involved, whose entries are discretely credited by initials only, the seamless document reflects a genuine meeting of minds, able ones at that. What makes the The Concord Museum: Decorative Arts From A New England Collection most useful to dealers, collectors and scholars is its rigorous attention to Eastern Massachusetts furniture. Squeezed into the 200-page volume is every blockfront the museum owns, plus tables, chairs, mirrors, clocks, and a smattering of textiles, ceramics, and metalware. For each object, the authors supply provenance, construction, condition, inscriptions, dimensions and materials. Sprinkled throughout are photographs of Concord's period rooms as they looked at the turn of the century.

Needless to say, with only 100 objects profiled, most of the institution's 18,000-item collection was omitted. "There are still some stories to be told," says Wood, noting that later scholars may delve into the museum's 1,200-piece ceramics cache, or sharpen an argument for the 8,000 stone artifacts it owns.

Results were enhanced by the fact that the Concord Museum has, in the last decade, collected "actively," as Wood puts it, rather than "passively" relying on donations. Provenance make for interesting reading; some entries describe Davis's transactions of the 1860s, others detail major auction purchases of the 1990s. Says the curator, "The litmus test for these additions - both purchases and gifts - is that they help us understand more about our collection and Concord history."

Among splendid examples of Concord craftsmanship that is new to the museum is a banjo clock by Joseph Dyar and a unique miniature tall-case clock by Joseph Mulliken; case pieces by two Eighteenth Century Concord cabinetmakers; and the largest collection of late Colonial Concord silver anywhere.

Wood, who says the focused nature of holdings makes shopping straightforward, notes that "some new acquisitions have completely changed the way we think about Concord furniture." He cites a chest-on-chest purchased at Skinner in October 1994 which made him reconsider the origins of a high chest and chest-on-chest that had long been attributed to Joseph Hosmer.

Out of ignorance and convenience, the Concord craftsmen has traditionally been credited with nearly every piece of local furniture that came along. The facts were "partly sorted out by Myrna Kaye some years ago," the curator says, "but the process continues. With these acquisitions, we know of a total of three Concord shops."

Accompanying the catalog is an exhibition of the same title, on view through September, 1997. The 85-object display examines Concord shop traditions and the role of the craftsman in the community through three centuries of Concord's history. Among many highlights is the Gregory Stone cupboard, the touchstone for a group of furniture made by the Harvard joiner shops; the only Seventeenth Century looking glass with a documented New England history; and the only known chest of drawers by the Nineteenth Century Concord cabinetmaker James Adams.

Museum hours through December are Monday through Saturday, from 9 am to 5 pm, and Sunday, noon to 5 pm. After January, hours are Monday through Saturday, 11 am to 4 pm, and Sunday, noon to 4 pm.

Copies of The Concord Museum: Decorative Arts from a New England Collection are available from the Concord Museum Shop, 200 Lexington Road, PO Box 146, Concord, Mass. 01742 at a cost of $45 hardcover and $35 softcover. Include $5 shipping and handling per volume. Massachusetts residents must add five percent state sales tax per book. Allow two to four weeks for delivery. To order by phone with a VISA or Mastercard, call 508/369-5477.

This spring, the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities and the Concord Museum is offering their annual furniture course, "New Scholarship on Regional Furniture." Contributors to the catalog will present illustrated lectures on the furniture in the Concord Museum's collection, placing pieces in the context of New England regional styles.

The series will be on Tuesdays, May 6 through June 3, from 7 to 8:30 pm at the Lyman Estate in Waltham, Mass. A visit to the Concord Museum is planned for June 3. The series costs $90 ($75 SPNEA and Concord Museum members; $50 students with valid ID). Call SPNEA at 617/227-3956 to register.