A very old drawer, in a very old chest of drawers

We are finally home, after 3,600 miles on the road in two weeks. Sandy and I traveled to Valley Forge, PA, to attend the Woodworking in America conference. Following the conference we drove into the Western part of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont, a region commonly referred to as New England, for all readers not in the United States.

And now the job of cataloging photos of our trip begins, to make some order of the conference, the miles, the gorgeous views, and the wonderful people along the way.

As I started the job of cataloging the photos, I came across this photo of a drawer in an old cabinet from the 1800s. It is one of 8 drawers in an old cabinet at the Old Woodshed, in Intercourse, PA – I avoided flash, and used only very dim available light:

I cannot find any reference to a similar drawer – I don’t have the resources, or the knowledge to find the information quickly, as I would like to try this look in some test drawers. And searching the Internet has netted exactly zero results.

I love the look of this joinery, but I am having trouble deciding whether this is just a variation of a rabetted side on the drawer front. Also, since every part of the joint is pinned/pegged, are the pegs likely the main fasteners, or are they mostly decoration? Are the pegs likely to be glued in place? And how is this joint made? I can see myself today making the half-rounds using a Forstner bit on the edge of the drawer front, but how would you make the perfectly-matching contour on the sides? Was this all made by hand?

I look forward to some enlightenment from readers who might know the answers to my questions.

Update, and acknowledgments:
I received input from Glen Huey at Popular Woodworking, and from Asa Christiana at FineWoodworking.com. The bottom line: This joint is called a “scalloped dovetail” or, more precisely, the Knapp joint. You will find additional information on this joint here and here. I also thank Chuck Bender, of Acanthus Workshop, LLC, for additional information; you can read his feedback in the Comments to this article. Once I had the name of the joint, I searched and found the following jig to make this joint (the image is from the Woodworkers Supply web site; note that Woodworkers Supply calls this by a different name, the “pin and crescent joint”):

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