Skillin

American family of wood-carvers. Trained in wood-carving by their father, Simeon Skillin sr (1716-78), who was a prominent New England ship-carver, John Skillin (1745-1800) and Simeon Skillin jr (1756-1806) established by 1780 their own carver's shop in the north end of Boston, MA. During this partnership their brother, Samuel Skillin (1742-93), also took part in the family business. Together they worked extensively in the early 1790s for the Salem shipping magnate Elias Hasket Derby (1739-99), completing a relief and three figures, Peace, Virtue and Plenty, for a chest-on-chest (1791; New Haven, CT, Yale U. A.G.) by Stephen Badlam (1751-1815), as well as four garden statues for Derby's summer residence, Oak Hill, in Danvers, CT. Of these figures, only Plenty, with its elaborately carved cornucopia, survives (1793; Salem, MA, Peabody Mus.). Although a number of works have been attributed to the workshop of John and Simeon jr, only one other wood-carving has been documented

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