Lombard sideboard advertised by David Stockwell in The Magazine Antiques, April 1975.

WILMINGTON, DEL. — Brock Jobe, Clark Pearce and Christie Jackson are completing a book on the Federal-era cabinetmaker Nathan Lombard (1777–1847), who worked in Sturbridge and later in Sutton, Mass. As part of their effort, they want to examine as many Lombard pieces as possible. The craftsman is best known for distinctive inlays, including the eagle and shield, urn and vine and swirling paterae. At present, several key objects attributed to Lombard are known through photographs but have not been located by the scholars, who are asking Antiques and The Arts Weekly readers for their help locating the pieces.

One sideboard is illustrated in a 1929 advertisement in The Antiquarian. The piece belonged to a private owner in Greenwich, Conn., in the 1990s and was subsequently sold by the late Woodbury, Conn., dealer Wayne Pratt in the early 2000s.

“The trail runs cold after that. We pursued a number of potential leads, but with no luck,” Jobe wrote in a recent email.

The second sideboard is familiar from two images published in The Magazine Antiques. It appears in black and white in a short article by Homer Eaton Keyes in the magazine’s April 1922 issue, page 158. The editor describes the sideboard and states that it came down in his family. Wilmington, Del., dealer David Stockwell advertised the sideboard in color in the magazine in April 1975, describing the piece as “a unique Connecticut cherry example…intricately inlaid with blackberry vines, circa 1790.”

Lombard sideboard illustrated in The Antiquarian, July 1929.

Readers with information about these sideboards or other pieces of furniture with inlays in the Lombard manner are asked to contact Brock Jobe at bjobe@winterthur.org or by mail to Brock Jobe, Winterthur Museum, 5105 Kennett Pike, Winterthur, DE 19735. All correspondence will remain confidential.