Well-to-do families aspired to create interiors that were unified in their appearance. This concept included coordinating textiles and furnishings, which led to the production of suites of matching furniture. The Bayou Bend dressing table and a similar high chest of drawers (see B.28.1) are evocative of this vogue. They were made by a Connecticut cabinetmaker, their configuration revealing a transfer of design from a principal urban style center, in this instance Boston-Salem, to a less populous one.

Technical notes: Cherry; eastern white pine. The drawers’ partitions and dividers are dovetailed in. The indigenous cherry was stained to resemble imported mahogany. The dressing table has an aged finish.

Related examples: American Collector 10, no. 7 (August 1941), p. 1; Antiques 60 (October 1951), p. 255; Jobe and Kaye 1984, pp. 193–94, no. 34; Antiques 137 (April 1990), p. 833; Nadeau’s Auction Gallery, Colchester, Connecticut, March 31, 1990.

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.