Images(2)

Dressing table

Date1755-1770

OriginAmerica, Virginia, Southeastern

MediumBlack walnut, yellow pine, red cedar, white oak, and bald cypress (all by microanalysis).

DimensionsOH. 27 5/8; OW. 28 7/8; OD. 18 1/8.

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1968-734

DescriptionAppearance: Dressing table with rectangular top; three drawers with scratch beaded edges; four turned legs on pad feet.

Construction: The chamfered bottoms of the dovetailed drawers are set into grooves at the fronts and sides and are nailed at the rear edges. The paired drawer runners are tenoned into the rear rail, and they are half-lapped and sprig-nailed onto the front blade. The top has batten ends mitered at the corners. Wooden pins secure the top and the legs to the frame.

Materials: Black walnut top, rails, drawer fronts, and legs; yellow pine sides, back, and bottom for center drawer, and top glue blocks; red cedar sides and backs for side drawers; white oak bottoms for side drawers; bald cypress drawer runners (all by microanalysis).
Label TextTables similar to this one were produced in cabinetmaking centers from Maryland to South Carolina. Well built and of neat and plain design, they are in sharp contrast to the New England furniture-making traditions reflected in 1989-424. That example has a two-board top butt-joined at the center and roughly nailed to the frame, while the top of this table is framed on both ends by battens that are tongue and grooved in place and mitered at the front corners. Designed to combat warping, the same technique was often used on contemporary desk lids. Instead of nails, more flexible wooden pins secure the top assembly to the frame, thus allowing it to expand and contract without breaking as the temperature and relative humidity fluctuate. The artisan's reliance on sophisticated cabinetmaking customs is also evident in the table's carefully framed double drawer runners.

Undocumented tradition holds that this table descended from the Custis family of Williamsburg and the Eastern Shore of Virginia to the Lees on the Northern Neck and finally to the Stubbs family of Williamsburg and Gloucester County. In spite of a somewhat dubious migration, the table can be confidently ascribed to a cabinet shop somewhere in southeastern Virginia, probably south of the James River. Its structural and decorative details closely resemble those on a number of tables produced in that area, including a dressing or writing table that descended in the Pretlow and Denson families of Southampton County. The leg design on the CWF table was especially popular in Tidewater Virginia and adjacent areas of North Carolina. Common in Britain as well, the form was described in the 1790s by Gillows of Lancaster, an English furniture-making firm, as having "the legs turnd & round toes."

That the table was made in the eastern reaches of the district below the James is further suggested by its wood content. The black walnut used as the primary wood and the yellow pine, oak, and red cedar employed for the internal framing would have been available in many parts of the South, but the bald cypress used for the drawer runners grows principally in the coastal plain.

InscribedNone.
MarkingsNone.
ProvenanceBy tradition, the table descended from the Custis family to "Light Horse" Harry Lee of Westmoreland Co., Virginia, then to the Stubbs family of Williamsburg and later Gloucester Co. It passed through several hands to J. M. Rich of Norfolk, from whom it was acquired by CWF in 1968.