How can I describe what happened when I encountered for the first time the spiritual power of great furniture? In all my visits to museums, I have usually walked past furniture on my eager way to “the real thing”: paintings, sculptures, and ceramics. But in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts some years ago, I had the good fortune to meet Jonathan, a curator of American decorative arts and sculpture, and my eyes were opened. I saw, as he did, how furniture can have a majestic sculptural beauty that can stop one in one’s tracks. One such work was the Cogswell Boston Bombé Chest-on-Chest of 1782. It swells in a stately curve up to a surge of mahogany drawers and climaxes in an insouciant pediment, crowned with the American eagle. (This was early Boston, remember.) I was looking at glorious works of art—furniture, indeed, but even more, they were pieces shaped and crafted by a master hand. Beauty came at me from all dimensions, from unexpected angles, offering an enlargement of spirit I still cannot wholly comprehend.