The facade of this dressing table recalls Early Baroque examples in which the central drawer also appears shallower than those flanking it. In a new stylistic development, the void below is filled with an inverted carved shell. The dressing table’s overall configuration changed little between the Late Baroque and Rococo periods, the principal difference being that the central drawer assumed a greater prominence.

Technical notes: Black walnut; southern yellow pine (drawer runners), Atlantic white cedar (drawer bottoms, glue blocks below side drawer rails), yellow-poplar (drawer sides and backs), spruce (backboard). Located beneath the carved shells on the knees is an ornament composed of two beads that terminate in an arrowlike shape. The rear legs and feet are fully carved.

Related examples: A dressing table with similarly ornamented knees is published in Ward 1988, pp. 223–24, no. 114.

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, 1988.