Images(3)

Corner cupboard

Date1830-1845

Maker Nathan Overton

OriginAmerica, North Carolina, Randolph County

MediumMaple turned knobs; all other components of yellow pine.

DimensionsOH: 75 3/4" OW:38 1/2" OD: 17"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1956-154

DescriptionAppearance: One-piece corner cupboard with two paneled doors above the waist molding and two below; exterior surfaces covered with paint decoration, including graining and marbleizing.

Construction: The cupboard is a single unit. The joining of its front assembly, angled side stiles, top board, bottom board, and shelves follows the standard pattern. The three-sided back consists of rough sawn, tongue-and-groove vertical boards nailed to the rear edges of the shelves and to the top and bottom boards. The cornice, waist molding, and base molding are each built-up from two molded elements and face-nailed to the front assembly and side stiles. The lower doors conceal a thin meeting stile nailed to the front edge of the shelf and tenoned into the bottom board. All doors exhibit double-pinned through-tenons. The turned knobs on the upper right door and both lower doors are round-tenoned through the stiles and pinned. The longer round tenon on the twist knob for the upper left door protrudes three-quarters of an inch inside the door and is pierced at right angles with a cut nail shank, which serves as a catch on the adjacent shelf.
Label TextThe art of painting furniture and architectural surfaces to look like costly figured wood or polished stone was practiced in Britain as early as the fifteenth century. Known as graining or marbling, the technique was introduced to America before the end of the seventeenth century although little from that period survives. One of the earliest written American references to the practice concerned the newly erected Capitol in Williamsburg, Virginia. In 1705, it was ordered "that The wanscote and other Wooden Work on the first and Second ffloor in that part of ye Building where ye General Court is be painted Like Marble."

The popularity of architectural graining and marbling increased substantially in the South toward the close of the eighteenth century. Fashionable gentry residences featured doors, wainscoting, and other elements realistically painted to look as much like finely grained mahogany as possible. Sometimes simulated string inlays and panels of faux satinwood veneer embellished the work. The practice had become more widespread by the 1820s. Particularly in rural districts, the style became increasingly fanciful. Even in middling structures whole rooms were sometimes grained, marbled, and otherwise decorated in bold colors and vibrant patterns that were less and less realistic.

The taste for grained and marbled furniture grew apace. Often the decoration was executed by the same artisans who painted architectural interiors as the Randolph County, North Carolina, corner cupboard shown here illustrates. With its six-panel format, boldly grained doors, colorfully marbled cornice and waist moldings, and blackened base, the cupboard closely resembles the grained and marbled doors found in rural southern houses of the same date. Popularly termed "fancy painting," this decoration emerged in part as a reaction against the strict dictates of formality and balance that permeated the neoclassical style at the end of the eighteenth century. The idiosyncratic patterns and colors on the CWF cupboard are evidence that "fancy" referred not to high levels of ornamentation but to the imagination, as in "flights of fancy." The cupboard's decorator is unknown.

Nathan Overton (ca. 1792-1872), who described himself as a carpenter in the census of 1850, built and signed this cupboard. A North Carolina native, Overton moved to Randolph County in the state's central Piedmont shortly before his marriage there in 1821. He lived in or near Asheboro, where he and three of his sons, who also trained as carpenters, probably built more houses than furniture. Once again, the close ties between carpentry and the joined and nailed construction of most corner cupboards is underscored.

Inscribed"Martin L" and "A" are penciled in an early hand inside the upper left door. "Nathan Overton" is penciled in an early hand inside the upper right door and on the underside of the bottom board.
MarkingsNone