Desk

Date1760-1790

OriginAmerica, Virginia, Accomack County

MediumBlack walnut and yellow pine.

DimensionsOH: 44" OW: 37 7/8" OD: 21"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1974-663

DescriptionAppearance: Neat and plain desk with thumbnail molded lid and lid supports; corbelled recesses on desk interior with reverse-blockfronted drawer facades and shaped dividers; central prospect with arch-faced upper drawer over two stacked drawers, flanked by pilasters, all over long thin drawer with cove molded facade; on either side of prospect section, two bracketed pigeon holes with central vertical divider over two stacked drawers; at either end of desk interior, corbelled dividers that extend beyond central section with two stacked pigeon holes over a single drawer; thumbnail molded case drawers with replaced baroque brass hardware; coved base molding over straight bracket feet.

Construction: The top board is mitered and blind dovetailed to the two-board side panels, while the horizontal backboards are angle butt-joined and nailed into rabbets with hand-headed cut nails. The bottom boards are butt-joined and either open or half-blind dovetailed to the case sides; the joint is hidden by glue blocks. The exposed black walnut part of the writing surface is set into open dovetails on the case sides, while the butt-joined yellow pine rear shelf extends under the interior drawers and is likewise set into dadoes. The dividers in the writing interior are dadoed to the case sides and the top and to each other. The one-piece fall board has tongue-and-groove battens at either end. Both fall board supports are horizontally laminated and are faced with nailed-on thumbnail-molded facades. The left support has an unexplained vertically dovetailed spline near the rear. The drawer blades, which are open dovetailed to the case sides, consist of yellow pine boards faced with half-inch-thick black walnut. The stiles adjacent to the fall board supports are open dovetailed to the case and have full-depth and full-width dividers held in at the rear by nails driven through the backboards. The base molding is flush-nailed to the bottom edge of the case and to full-width blocks that run along the front and sides. The mitered front bracket feet, which are flush-mounted to the base molding, are glued to vertical blocks and shaped flankers. The side faces of the rear bracket feet are rabbeted to receive the nailed-in rear brackets, which are also nailed to the underside of the case and glued to flanking blocks.

Traditional dovetail construction is found on the interior desk drawers. The bottom panels are flush-nailed on the rear and sides, tapered on the underside of the front edges, and set into very thin grooves cut the full width of the drawer fronts. A small drawer in the guise of a pigeonhole bracket has an arched lower edge and sits above the central prospect, which similarly has a flush-nailed bottom panel set into a rabbet at the front. The long central drawer under the prospect section is set on yellow pine runners that allow it to clear the lower molding. The document drawers have extremely thin side panels glued into rabbets on the front. Their vertical back elements are angled on their upper edges toward the inside of the drawer; the bottom elements are similarly joined. Traditional dovetail construction also appears on the case drawers. They have beveled bottom panels set in grooves on all four sides and held in place with long glue blocks along the sides and by shorter blocks along the front and rear. The top edges of the drawer sides are rounded.

Materials: Black walnut top board, case sides, fall board, drawer fronts, interior drawer dividers, exposed part of writing surface, drawer blades and stiles, fall board supports, base molding, and exposed parts of feet; yellow pine back, bottom, drawer sides, drawer backs, drawer bottoms, unexposed rear portion of writing surface, and glue blocks.
Label TextThis black walnut desk retains no early history, although it is closely related to four other desks originally owned on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Much is now known about the raised-panel furniture made by finish carpenters and joiners in that area, but relatively little has come to light about cabinetmaking traditions on the Eastern Shore. The absence of sizable towns often worked against the establishment of such trades. However, a few commercial villages began to develop around county seats and elsewhere near the end of the eighteenth century, and records confirm that a small number of cabinetmakers were drawn to them. One such community was the Accomack County villiage of Drummondtown, known as Accomac [sic] after 1893. This desk and several related examples were made in that area by an unknown artisan. A likely candidate is cabinetmaker Richard Bull, who was active in Drummondtown during the 1780s and who offered a wide range of sophisticated furniture forms.

The Drummondtown desks are rooted in an earlier baroque tradition that is most evident in their writing interiors, which feature corbelled recesses and reverse blockfront drawer facades. On the CWF desk, the open prospect section features a pair of drawers with reverse blockfront facades situated under an arched bracket and framed by a pair of fluted document drawers. The entire section rests above a long, shallow drawer with a cove-molded facade and a single brass pull. A similar but slightly different approach appears on the associated desks, where pairs of document drawers with Doric pilasters frame a prospect that contains three reverse blockfront drawers. As on the present example, a wide, shallow drawer lies below the prospect, but it is faced with a series of reverse blockfront facades and three small brass pulls intended to give the appearance of three separate drawers. Simply shaped straight bracket feet support the CWF desk, while the related examples have attenuated ogee brackets that stand on thin bottom pads.

The production of desks with dramatically configured baroque interiors in an isolated area like Virginia's Eastern Shore is curious. The closest parallels appear on early eighteenth-century English desks. The vast majority of eastern Virginia furniture makers commonly relied on British design sources. On the other hand, closely related desk interiors were also produced in New England, the source of much furniture imported into the coastal South. The Westmoreland County, Virginia, residence of Colonel James Steptoe contained one "old New England desk" in 1757. In short, the design for the CWF desk may have come to the Eastern Shore directly from Great Britain or it may have been filtered through the New England furniture trade.

While the present desk is made of native black walnut and yellow pine, its general construction reveals certain stylistic and technological shortcuts associated with the cabinetmaking traditions of provincial Britain and New England. Unlike most urban eastern Virginia cabinet wares, the case has no dustboards and the drawers are supported by nailed-on runners. The dovetail attachment of the drawer blades to the case sides is not covered with thin vertical strips but is left fully exposed.

Several of the desks in this group exhibit idiosyncratic details. On this one, the drawers have remarkably thin sides. Measuring one-eighth-inch in thickness, they are glued to the comparatively thick bottom elements and nailed into rabbets on the front and back faces. While the remaining interior drawers have traditional dovetailed construction, their bottoms are flush-nailed in place, beveled along the underside of the front edges, and set into extremely thin grooves that span the drawer fronts. A more conventional grooved attachment of the bottom panels is found on the larger case drawers, but there the groove runs on all four sides and is set nearly an inch from the bottom of the drawer side instead of the more usual placement of about half that height. The resulting space is filled by large rectangular glue blocks that reinforce the bottom and act as widely spaced runners. Finally, the fall-board supports are not of solid construction, as is the norm, but are horizontally laminated and show no evidence of a dowel or stop block to prevent them from coming out of the case.

As more research is done on the development of towns on the Eastern Shore, additional information about the peninsula's cabinetmaking traditions will likely emerge. If the desks in this group are any indication, those findings may reveal that local artisans and patrons were driven by a markedly different set of cultural impulses than residents of the Virginia mainland.

InscribedA variety of pencil, chalk, and incised construction marks are found on the interior drawers. An "R" penciled on either side of the right document drawer is probably a maker's mark to indicate drawer location.
MarkingsA pair of inscribed marks that look like a "W" over an "M" are on the bottom edge of the fall board and on the corresponding blade. They may be construction marks.
ProvenanceThe desk was acquired in 1974 from antiques dealer Lindsay Grigsby, who reported that it had been found on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.