The writing table and bookcase, a relatively rare form today, appears in the 1810 New York price book. The design, as the name suggests, places a bookcase on top of a pier table. Often the drawer is fitted out with an adjustable writing surface and areas for pens, as seen here. The upper section usually features mullioned glass doors. The Bayou Bend example, with its severe plain surfaces veneered with richly figured mahogany, exemplifies the French-inspired Restoration style at its most sophisticated. Gilt-bronze mounts and gilding on the typically ovoid fluted feet provide bright accents that relieve the severity and unite the overall composition.

Technical notes: Mahogany, mahogany veneer; eastern white pine (drawer front, cornice, lower mirror frame, drawer runners, front feet, front section of corner blocks on either side of drawer, all interior drawer framing except front horizontal drawer support and rear section of corner blocks on either side of drawer, bookshelves, framing members in back of upper case), yellow-poplar (back of lower mirror, rear section of corner blocks on either side of drawer, front horizontal drawer support, drawer bottom, shelf steps, two framed backboard panels in upper case), gilding, glass, gilt-bronze mounts. The lock on the upper case is stamped “TURNER.”

Related examples: A stenciled New York example at MMA (Tracy et al. 1970, no. 70); one from Albany, New York, at Baltimore Museum of Art (Cooper 1993, p. 212, no. 169); a Philadelphia example (Flanigan 1986, p. 220, no. 90): a Baltimore example (Weidman et al. 1993, p. 136). A group of New York square sofas exhibit similar veneered columns and fluted carved feet (Tracy and Gerdts 1963, no. 57).

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.