Clark Pearce Author

Robert D. Mussey Jr. was founder in 1982 of the furniture conservation laboratory at Society at the Preservation of New England Antiquities in Boston. He was founder and is now retired as a principal in Robert Mussey Associates, which provides comprehensive furniture conservation services to museums, private collectors, and historic houses. He has published widely in museum journals on a variety of furniture conservation topics, is author of The Furniture Masterworks of John and Thomas Seymour, and curator of a major museum exhibition of the Seymours’ work. Now retired, he is at work on a study of the earliest introduction of woodworking machinery in the furniture making trades. Clark Pearce advises and brokers art and antiques to a group of clients with far-ranging interests. He helps define and shape their collections in logical ways, building on their particular interests and strengths. His specialty is American furniture, and he also works with early silver, ceramics, paintings, and other decorative arts from the early-18th-century through the 19th-century. As an independent scholar he does primary historical research on many topics related to American decorative arts. He has published many articles in scholarly journals and magazines, with a chapter in the upcoming book Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture.