- Dressing or Toilet Table
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The dressing table was often produced en suite with the high chest and was also used in the bedroom. As with the finest examples of the period, this dressing table is veneered with richly figured walnut. Four flitches, fitted together on the top to create a bold pattern, are surrounded by inlaid herringbone and cross-banded borders, and that motif is repeated on the three drawer fronts. The profile of the turned legs relates closely to the style of turning associated with Boston.
Technical notes: Black walnut and walnut veneer, aspen (legs, feet); eastern white pine (top, back and front interior framing, drawer components, backboard). Brasses are replaced. The drawer construction is dovetailed, the bottom board nailed to the sides.
Related examples: Levy Gallery 1992, p. 10, no. 5; Yale (Ward 1988, p. 197, no. 93); Comstock 1966, p. 261; advertisement of R. W. Worth Antiques, Maine Antique Digest, August 1996, p. 39-E. The turnings match those on a Boston high chest at Winterthur (Forman 1970, p. 21).
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.
ProvenanceBy tradition owned by Parson Thomas Smith (1702–1795), Boston, and later Falmouth (now Portland), Maine, late 18th century; [...]; Vincent D. Andrus (1916–1962), New York, by 1955; [Ginsburg & Levy, New York, December 2, 1955–May 28, 1956]; purchased by Miss Ima Hogg, May 28, 1956; given to MFAH, 1969.
Exhibition History
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