Sideboard

Date1800-1820

OriginAmerica, North Carolina, Roanoke River Basin

MediumBlack walnut and yellow pine.

DimensionsOH. 43 1/8; OW. 74 7/8; OD. 24 3/4.

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1966-521

DescriptionAppearance: Rectangular sideboard with slight projection of facade between center front legs; 6 tapered legs; center section with wide center drawer flanked by two small drawers, all over central 2-door cupboard flanked by 2 narrow but deep bottle drawers with internal dividers; single cupboard door in each end section; panel frame doors with scratch-beaded edges; drawer fronts with scratched beaded edges; drawers originally featured stamped oval pulls and inset brass rim escutcheons.

Construction: The top, consisting of three butt-joined boards, is attached to the case by screws set in wells in the backboard and the front top rail. The back and sides of the case are tenoned into the legs. The front top rail is dovetailed into the tops of the four front legs. The front of the bottom board is tenoned into the right and left front legs and notched to receive the center front legs. The case partitions between the end cupboards and the center section are tenoned into the backboards and the center front legs. The three butt-joined bottom boards are nailed to the lower edges of the case partitions and nailed into rabbets on the case sides. The drawer blade is tenoned into the center front legs. The dividers between the drawers of the upper tier are tenoned into the top front rail and the drawer blade. Those between the center cupboard and the bottle drawers are tenoned into the drawer blade and through-tenoned into the bottom board. The two supports for the three top drawers are tenoned into the drawer blade and the backboard. The outer guides for the small top drawers are nailed to the case partitions between the center and end sections of the case. The inner guides for the small drawers also guide the center drawer and are glued to the drawer supports. The bottle drawers run directly on the case bottom; their outer guides are glued to the case partitions and the bottom boards. The inner guides for the bottle drawers are tenoned into the case back and the dividers between the drawers and the center cupboard. The front edges of the top front rail and the bottom board are faced with strips of black walnut secured with glue and nails. The drawer stop blocks are glued to the backboards.

The doors consist of panels that are flat on both faces and set into mortised-and-tenoned frames. The rails of these frames are shouldered and tenoned through the stiles. Some of the through-tenons exhibit original central wedges.

The drawers are dovetailed. Their bottoms are beveled and set into grooves at the front and sides, are flush-nailed at the rear, and were originally reinforced with four-inch-long, thin glue blocks set at wide intervals. The bottle drawers each feature three interior partitions set into dadoes.

Materials: Black walnut top, sides, legs, drawer fronts, doors, drawer blade, drawer dividers, front facing strip on top rail, and front facing strips on bottom board; all other components of yellow pine.

Label TextSouthern sideboards and sideboard tables of restrained, relatively unadorned form and solid, non-veneered construction are today frequently termed "hunt boards," a word that conjures up images of red-coated horsemen feasting and drinking after the chase. Across the South, it is often reported that hunt boards were carried out onto the lawns and kitchen yards of plantation houses where they were loaded with food and drink in anticipation of the hunters' return. The tall legs of these pieces, we are told, made it possible for men on horseback to reach the refreshments without dismounting.

Colorful though this vision may be, it is mythical. While riding to the hounds and feasting afterward are documented aspects of southern gentry culture in the preindustrial period, no evidence supports the notion that heavy furniture was hauled outdoors for such events. Researchers at MESDA have reviewed thousands of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century southern cabinetmaker's advertisements and estate inventories and several accounts of hunting expeditions and have never come across the term "hunt board" or a reference to the outdoor use of sideboards and sideboard tables. Along with names like "grandfather clock" and "highboy," "hunt board" was likely popularized by Victorians who looked longingly at the past through rose-colored glasses.

In reality, straightforward, plain sideboards were put to the same uses as their more decorative counterparts. They provided a surface for serving food and mixing beverages in the dining room, a series of drawers and compartments for the storage of dining equipment and wine bottles, and a place to display prized possessions. The surfaces of these forms were comparatively free of decoration, not because they were intended for outdoor use by huntsmen, but because most were made by rural artisans for customers with conservative tastes and sometimes modest means.

A case in point is this large black walnut sideboard made in North Carolina's upper Roanoke River basin during the early national period. Situated about one hundred miles from the Atlantic coast just south of the Virginia border, the upper Roanoke basin was home to a mainly rural society of small, middling, and large planters, and the economic focus was on farmsteads rather than towns. As furniture historian John Bivins observed, a healthy rural cabinet trade soon evolved. Working in widely distributed shops, the region's joiners and cabinetmakers generated quantities of sound, well-made furniture although few had the economic means or the access to supplies and transportation systems necessary to support regular production of complex urban-style furniture.

Much of the furniture-buying public in the upper Roanoke basin favored simple, straightforward cabinet wares, a pattern evidenced by the plain styling of many locally made objects. In part, this restraint represents the influence of Petersburg, Virginia. Located about sixty miles north over well-traveled roads, Petersburg was both an important furniture-making center and an active trading partner with the inland counties of northeastern North Carolina. The neat-and-plain style that had dominated the furniture trade in eastern Virginia during the late colonial period abated in most cities after the Revolution, but it remained current in Petersburg well into the nineteenth century. Not surprisingly, this lingering conservatism was reflected in the goods consumed by householders within Petersburg's market sphere. The trend was reinforced in the upper Roanoke basin when nearly a dozen Petersburg chair- and cabinetmakers moved into that area during the early national period. Most continued to make neat-and-plain furniture with only a slight acknowledgment of the newly fashionable neoclassical style.

Working within this context of rural trade practices and conservative tastes, the unknown maker of the CWF sideboard opted to use none of the popular curvilinear carcass shapes found on contemporary urban sideboards. Instead, he chose a more easily and inexpensively fabricated rectilinear frame. He also avoided the high cost of imported mahogany by relying on native black walnut, and he chose traditional panel-framed construction for the doors over the laminated and veneered approach common to more elaborate examples. Eschewing inlays entirely, he confined ornamentation to scratch beading on the doors and drawer fronts, the use of imported oval brasses, and a slight, almost architectural, projection at the center of the facade. In short, the artisan produced a plain but well-built object that fully met local expectations of style and function and was viewed as a stylish addition to the domestic setting in which it first stood.

InscribedThere are various scribblings in red crayon on the sides of several drawers.
MarkingsFifteen concentric circles have been scribed into the right side of the right bottle drawer with a compass.
ProvenanceThe sideboard carries a tradition of ownership in the Brinkley family of Halifax Co., N. C. It was acquired by CWF from Williamsburg antiques dealer William Bozarth in 1966.