Bureau dressing table

Date1750-1760

OriginAmerica, Virginia, Culpeper County

MediumBlack walnut, tulip poplar, cherry, and oak.

DimensionsOH: 32 1/2"; OW: 35 1/2"; OD: 17 1/2"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1974-26

DescriptionAppearance: Standard bureau table form with one long drawer over two columns of two short drawers flanking a recessed prospect door; top molded on front and side edges; six straight bracket feet.

Construction: The three-piece top board is dovetailed to the three-piece side panels and the joint is covered by the nailed-on top moldings. The two-piece bottom board is similarly dovetailed to the side panels and is hidden by the applied feet and base moldings. The horizontally grained, three-board back is beveled and set into grooves on the sides and top and flush-nailed at the bottom. Traditional dovetail construction characterizes the drawers, which have three-piece chamfered bottom panels that are set into grooves on the front and sides and flush-nailed at the rear. The top edges of the drawer sides are rounded, and all parts except the fronts are riven. Thin runners flush-nailed to the interior surfaces of the side panels support the smaller drawers. A central blade is butt-joined to the recessed area of the bottom board, with bracket feet applied below. The bracket feet and base moldings are cut from single boards and miter-joined at the corners. Finally, chamfered interior foot blocks are glued and flush-nailed to thin flankers, which are glued to the bottom board.

Materials: Black walnut top, sides, moldings, drawer fronts, drawer blades, prospect door, interior shelf, and feet; tulip poplar for two of the three bottom boards on the upper drawer, interior case dividers, back, and foot blocks; cherry drawer runners and remaining bottom boards on upper drawer; oak drawer sides, drawer backs, and bottoms on remaining drawers.
Label TextMade of native black walnut, this bureau table was originally owned and almost certainly made in Culpeper County, Virginia, a rural area in the eastern part of the central Piedmont. Evidence of the table's provincial origin is plentiful. The feet are supported by nailed-on, vertically coved blocks akin to those found on case furniture made in Piedmont shops from Virginia's upper Rappahannock River basin to the upper Roanoke basin in North Carolina. The sides, backs, and bottoms of most drawers, the case backboards, and several other parts are made of riven oak and tulip poplar, while the rest of the case is built from heavy, coarsely sawn stock. The partial presence of dustboards is also typical of rural work in the South. Although the wide top drawer is supported by a structural dustboard, the smaller central drawers rest on thin runners attached to the case with multiple large wrought nails. Several desks and chests of drawers and a painted yellow pine chest on uncommonly tall legs (CWF acc. 1995-201)--all with histories in the Culpeper area--exhibit most of these same traits and probably came from the same shop. The comparatively large double- and triple-ovolo knee brackets on the bureau table and the chest, respectively, are characteristic of objects in the group.

The multiboard construction of its larger elements, an approach often encountered in provincial British furniture from the second quarter of the eighteenth century, is one of the most unusual aspects of this bureau table. Here the top, side, and back panels of the case and the bottom panels of the drawers are all comprised of multiple butt-joined boards, some as narrow as three inches. While the riving of the stock used for the drawer construction accounts for the slender gauge of the boards in those areas, it does not explain the thick, but surprisingly narrow, sawn stock used in the carcass. Perhaps the artisan was a recent immigrant still accustomed to making the most economical use of materials that were in short supply in Britain.

InscribedNone.
MarkingsNone.
ProvenanceThe bureau table was purchased from Mrs. August B. Payne in 1974. She had acquired it from a Mrs. Randolph of Culpeper Co., where it had been owned by the latter's family since at least the mid-nineteenth century.