Images(3)

Dressing table

Date1745-1760

OriginAmerica, Virginia, Norfolk

MediumBlack walnut, yellow pine, and white cedar

DimensionsOH: 28 3/8" OW: 33" OD: 20 5/8"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase, The Sara and Fred Hoyt Furniture Fund

Object number2012-164

DescriptionAppearance: Dressing table on four cabriole legs with pad feet; deeply shaped front apron with pair of turned drops; three drawers with thumbnail molded edges; rectangular top molded on four sides.

Construction: Securing the top to the frame at the rear are two very large wrought nails driven from below and through the frame. Old, if not original, glue blocks further secure the top. Wrought brads hold the upper drawer blade to the underside of the top. The five drawer supports are tenoned into the front and rear skirts. The rear dovetail pins on the drawers extend nearly one-half inch beyond the rear of the drawer. All three of the drawers were originally fitted with locks. This forced the placement of the brasses to the top of each drawer front.

Materials: Black walnut top, front rail, side rails, drawer fronts, pendants, legs, and knee blocks; yellow pine rear rail, drawer sides, drawer backs, drawer runners, and glue blocks; white cedar drawer bottoms.
Label TextThis unusually shapely dressing table was made about the middle of the eighteenth century in the port city of Norfolk, Virginia, where it descended in the Talbot family. Unlike most southern furniture, which closely emulates British cabinetmaking traditions, the design and construction seen here parallel distinctive New England conventions. Were it not for the table's Tidewater history and its execution in black walnut, yellow pine, and white cedar, this object could be convincingly ascribed to the Connecticut River valley where numerous remarkably similar tables were made. There is little doubt that its maker migrated from that part of New England to the lower Chesapeake Bay.

Like many New England case pieces, the drawer sides on the Talbot table extend nearly one-half inch beyond the drawer backs, and the flat drawer bottoms are flush-nailed into rabbets. Each drawer is supported on a single narrow central runner that is tenoned into the frame at the rear and nailed into an open mortise at the front. This minimal interior framing and the expedient and relatively crude nailed construction that joins the top to the frame reflect a common New England furniture-making approach rarely employed by southern artisans.

Two other Norfolk dressing tables by the same cabinetmaker are known, one with a history in adjacent Princess Anne County. Although the second and third tables are like the Talbot example in most ways, their raised-pad feet echo a form commonly found on New England furniture. The feet on the Talbot table mimic the British-inspired feet usually seen on southeastern Virginia furniture. This modification and the presence of a fully molded top on only two of the three examples suggest that the unidentified craftsman gradually diverged from some of his New England customs in order to comply with the decidedly British aesthetic orientation of eastern Virginia furniture buyers. The same may be said of the scratch-beaded ornamentation around the skirt of the CWF table. Scratch beading, a popular British detail, appears on many southern furniture forms but is infrequently encountered on northern work.
InscribedThomas Talbot, an early twentieth-century owner, stenciled "T. Talbot" in large letters on all the drawer bottoms and on several places inside of the frame.
MarkingsNo.
ProvenanceThe table was probably first owned by Thomas Talbot (d. 1771) and then passed to his son, Solomon Butt Talbot (d. 1800); thence to his son, Thomas Talbot (d. 1838); to his son and daughter-in-law, William Henry Talbot (d. 1884) and Elizabeth Wright Talbot; to their son, Thomas Talbot (d. 1932); to his brother, Minton Wright Talbot (1868-1950); and to his daughter, Caroline Butt Talbot, who sold the table to CWF in 2012. From the late eighteenth century until the 1960s, the family primarily lived at Talbot Hall, their ca. 1780 plantation house on Crab Creek, now a part of Norfolk.

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