In 1797 young Harriet Clark waxed enthusiastic over a tambour desk she had seen: “Dr. Prince has a new kind of desk and I wish Papa would permit me to have one like it—the lower desk that is a parcel of drawers hid with doors made in reeds to slip back and in the middle a plain door, ‘tis the handsomest thing in the kind I ever saw.” This new furniture form, along with the worktable, attests to the increasing prominence women were assuming in American society.  

The Bayou Bend desk is reminiscent of Thomas Sheraton’s design for “A Lady’s Cabinet and Writing Table”; however, substituted for the doors is a pair of tambour shutters that more closely correspond to the diminutive French writing table called a bonheur du jour. Prior to the American Revolution French furniture was occasionally recorded in colonial households. Subsequently it found its way in increasing quantities through Americans returning from abroad or by émigrés fleeing the turbulence of revolution. For example, George Washington purchased a bonheur du jour from Anne Flore Millet, marquise de Bréhan, who accompanied Eléonore-François-Elie, marquis de Moustier, to New York when he served as ambassador to the young nation.  

American versions of the European form were produced by cabinetmakers in New England and as far away as North Carolina, Kentucky, and Ohio. The Bayou Bend desk is similar to one labeled by the Boston cabinetmakers John and Thomas Seymour. An attribution to their shop is given further credence by the discovery of the script initials TS or JS on the lower case. Although these relationships support an attribution, they are hardly sufficient to identify a specific craftsman, considering the collaborative system then in effect. Seymour’s own advertisements imply as much: “Useful, and Ornamental Cabinet Furniture all made by or under the direction of Thomas Seymour.” 

Technical notes: Mahogany, unidentified inlay: eastern white pine (interior framing, large drawers and bottoms of the smaller interior drawers), red oak (small interior drawers’ sides and backs). The cabinet sits within a molding attached to the lower case, framed in front by the writing flap. When the flap is opened it reveals an ivory escutcheon for the cabinet. The desk retains its original enameled drawer pulls, loper pulls, and most of its interior pulls. The pigeonholes are painted blue. On the writing section board covered by the cabinet are the boldly inscribed initials TS or JS (Brown 1997, p. 203, pl. I). 

Related examples: Most closely related is Warren 1996, pp. 731, 735. Similar examples include Stoneman 1959 (pp. 60–61, no. 14; Montgomery 1966b, pp. 228–29, no. 184; Antiques 133 (May 1955), p. 1086. The legs of the Bayou Bend desk terminate in a molded spade foot, not unlike that on a labeled Seymour card table (Flanigan 1986, pp. 178–79, no. 70).

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.