The seeming simplicity of this dressing or toilet table, with single drawer and plain walnut, rather than veneered, surfaces, belies the sophistication evidenced by the turned elements and saltire-shaped stretcher. The design of the turned legs, with high, rounded cup and little rebate below, echoes that on both other high-style case pieces of Boston origin and on a rare and sophisticated Boston-made slate-top table. The stretcher is molded rather than following the more common flat design; the angled terminals at the turned legs add a distinctive detail.

Technical notes: Black walnut (top, sides, drawer front, front skirt, cross stretchers and finial, five block caps), aspen (feet, center drop), soft maple (legs); eastern white pine (backboard, corner case posts, drawer run­ners, center block). Brasses are not original. The drawer construction is dovetailed, the bottom board nailed, with grain running side to side.

Related examples: Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford (Forman 1987, p. 161, no. 12); similar leg design: Nutting 1962, nos. 388, 1092, a dressing table and high chest; Randall 1965, no. 55, a slate-top table.

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.