Owner: Captain William Elerson (1815–1865)
Origin: Massachusetts
Circa: 1850
Materials & Dimensions: White pine with original painted decoration, original iron strap hinges, steel lock, and brass escutcheon. Ends in old green paint. Replaced rope handles. 18½ × 45½ × 18½ inches.
Inscription: Banner inscribed “WILLIAM ELERSON.”

Description:
This exceptional painted sea chest combines a classic maritime form with unusually ambitious folk decoration. Constructed of white pine and retaining its original painted surface, the chest is fitted with original iron strap hinges, steel lock, and brass escutcheon, with the ends painted in old green. The rope handles have been replaced.

The front panel is decorated with a monumentally scaled American eagle in flight, clutching a banner inscribed “William Elerson.” Beneath the eagle is a miniature landscape of hills, trees, and houses, elevating a practical sailor’s chest into a highly expressive work of American folk art. The combination of scale, surface, subject, and personal inscription makes this one of the most exceptional painted sea chests known.

William Elerson was born in Charlestown, Orleans County, Vermont, and later relocated to Sandwich, Massachusetts, where he married Abigail “Abbie” Wing. Elerson and his brother-in-law Isaac Wing were both ship captains, with Elerson recorded as a mariner and seaman in census records. He captained the whaling ship William Rotch of New Bedford from 1856 to 1860, and an 1856 ship log now held by the New Bedford Whaling Museum records mentions of Elerson as captain during a South Atlantic and Pacific voyage.

Published:
David A. Schorsch and Eileen M. Smiles, American Folk Art: Toward Abstraction (Woodbury, CT, 2025), no. 2.