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.