Following the Revolution, some citizens sought domestic objects that would express in the most elaborate ways America’s pride in having achieved independence. Shipping magnate Elias Hasket Derby (1739–99), a prominent citizen of Salem, Massachusetts, could well afford to do so. He and his wife, Elizabeth Crowninshield Derby, commissioned this majestic chest-on-chest as a wedding present for their daughter Anstis, who married Benjamin Pickman, Jr., of Salem in 1789. Derby tasked Stephen Badlam, a war veteran from a town south of Boston, to make the case, which is loosely based on two different plates from Thomas Chippendale’s The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker’s Director. Derby took the unusual step of also engaging leading Boston sculptors to carve figures for the pediment of the case. Rising to the challenge set by their patron, John Skillin and his brother Simeon created a scheme of three females in fashionable Neoclassical dress and distinctive accessories imbued with allegorical meaning. The figure on the left, carrying a palm frond, personifies Peace. On the right is Plenty, clasping a cornucopia. The central figure dressed as Athena and holding a laurel wreath of victory in one hand and a liberty pole topped by a Phrygian cap in the other, likely represents America. The chest conflates the family’s twin hopes for prosperity for both the couple and the young nation.