Large cupboards or dressers, designed for the storage and display of dishes and glasswares, constituted an important standard feature of the Pennsylvania German kitchen furnishing plan. Typically, the form has closed cupboards in the lower section. While in the earlier examples the upper shelves were left open, at the end of the eighteenth century they began to be closed with glazed doors. The tripartite arrangement of the Bayou Bend piece is unusual. The basically English form, with ogee bracket feet, fielded panels, and architectural cornice, has been given both a personal touch and a Germanic flavor through the application of fanciful multicolor painted and grained decoration.

Technical notes: The ogee bracket feet have been cut down; the hardware is replaced.

Related examples: An example from nearby Schuykill County inscribed with the date 1830 has a similar double door and central section of fixed glass (Garvan 1982, p. 31, no. 16).

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.