Desk

Date1805-1815

MediumBlack walnut, yellow pine, tulip poplar, butternut, and maple.

DimensionsOH: 44 3/4"OW:41 1/4" OD:20 3/8"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1976-109

DescriptionAppearance: Fall-front desk; four graduated drawers with simple string inlays; shaped front and side aprons with string inlays; front apron with fan inlay; French feet.

Construction: On the case, the top board is half-blind dovetailed into the two-board case sides and the pins are wedged. The bottom boards are dadoed to the case sides. The back consists of three vertical tongue-and-grooved boards nailed into rabbets at the top and on the side and flush-nailed at the bottom. The writing surface is dadoed to the case sides and half-lapped to a raised rear board with a molded edge that is surmounted by the interior drawers and pigeonholes. The end battens on the fall board are through-tenoned and mitered at the top. Both fall-board supports have cross-banded facades and brass knobs, and both have a single large dowel set into the inside rear face to serve as a stop. The stiles adjacent to the fall-board supports are tenoned into the underside of the writing surface at the top and are partially angled at the bottom to receive the tapered ends of the drawer guides, which are tapered at the rear and nailed onto the runner below. The drawer blades are dadoed into the front of the case sides. That the dadoes were cut with a saw is indicated by marks on the inside of the case. At the front of the case, the drawer blade joints are covered with thin veneer strips. The lower three sets of drawer runners are tenoned into the backs of the drawer blades, flush-mounted to the case sides, and angled at the rear, where they are toe-nailed to the case sides. The upper drawer runners are similarly joined at the front and tenoned into a rear blade that is dadoed into the case sides and also nailed through the backboards. The case sides extend to the floor to form feet. Applied shaped facades create the French foot profile. The triangular rear faces of the rear bracket feet are glued and nailed in place. The feet are backed by vertical blocks, and unevenly spaced glue blocks set around the underside of the bottom board support the aprons.

On the desk interior, the dividers and shelves are dadoed to one another and to the case sides. The prospect door has a glued-on and mitered scalloped border. The keyhole is framed by an inlaid diamond-shaped escutcheon. The document drawers have inlaid fronts with top and bottom moldings glued into rabbets, sides joined at the front and rear with large open dovetails, and bottoms flush-mounted inside of the drawer and nailed in place. The small drawers are constructed like the case drawers. The bottom panels run perpendicular to the front rather than parallel, however. The pigeonhole brackets are flush-glued to the dividers and the underside of the upper shelf.

The case drawers are traditionally dovetailed. The beveled bottom panels, which parallel the drawer fronts, are set in grooves at the front and sides and are flush-nailed at the rear. The cock beading is both glued and nailed on, while the keyholes are framed by inlaid diamond-shaped escutcheons.

Materials: Black walnut top, sides, drawer blades, fall board, fall-board supports, drawer fronts, exposed parts of feet, writing interior dividers and shelves, writing surface and corresponding backboard, skirt veneer, scalloped border veneer on prospect door, and vertical strip on leading edges of case sides; yellow pine backboards, bottom boards, drawer runners, drawer guides, case drawer side and back and bottom panels, rear faces of bracket feet, glue blocks, and some side, back, and bottom panels on interior drawers; tulip poplar remaining side, back, and bottom panels on interior drawers; butternut cross-banding, escutcheons, and some inlays; maple remaining inlays.
Label TextAfter 1780, most American furniture makers turned increasingly to a new type of desk called a secretary, a form consistently found in post-Revolutionary American price books and contemporary British design manuals. Cabinetmakers and patrons in many of the country's more isolated areas, including parts of the southern backcountry, hesitated to embrace the new form and remained loyal to the familiar slant-front desk, however. This black walnut desk made about 1810 for the Coiner family of Augusta County in the central Valley of Virginia is such an example.

Despite its old-fashioned form, the decoration on the Coiner desk is clearly neoclassical in style. The linear arrangement of the interior drawers and pigeonholes is accented by geometric stringing and floral inlay, while a single string on the prospect door echoes the serpentine shape of the border, a decorative element that recalls earlier Augusta County traditions. The large case drawers are adorned with color-contrasted triple stringing. Cross-banding defines the fall-board supports. In place of the base moldings found on earlier desks, the veneered skirt is demarcated by an inlaid horizontal band and accented with a patera inlay. Narrow splayed French feet have been substituted for old-fashioned bracket feet. These features illustrate the way in which the maker modified an older form with more up-to-date ornamentation despite his distance from coastal design centers. He also accomplished the task with locally available materials: instead of using fashionable imported mahogany and satinwood, the artisan employed black walnut solids and veneers with inlays of butternut and maple.

Artisans in coastal centers usually went to great lengths to conceal their joinery, but the maker of this desk left the dovetail joints on the top fully exposed. Such construction reflects the dominance of German-American craft traditions in the Valley of Virginia. Another deviation from Anglo-inspired coastal traditions is found in the drawer support system. Rather than utilizing full dustboards dadoed to the case sides, this desk features thin drawer runners tenoned into the drawer blades, chamfered at the rear, and toe-nailed to the case sides, an approach found on many earlier Valley desks. The inlaid vine and flower motif on the document drawers parallels local designs and is yet another expression of German-American customs. Similarly associated are the through-tenoned battens on the fall board, a detail present on the fall boards of many western Virginia desks and chests.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Coiner desk is the large number of early inscriptions and signatures on its interior drawers. Most of the names are those of descendants of George M. Coiner (1758-1840), a German farmer who moved to Augusta County from Pennsylvania in the late eighteenth century and probably was the first owner of the desk. Some of the inscriptions only give a name or a date, while others express popular mid-nineteenth-century themes associated with mourning rituals, remembrance, and concerns about death. For instance, George Coiner, Jr. (1787-1865), wrote, "This drawer my Name shall Ever have when / When I am dead and in my Grave and greedy / worms my body Eat and then you may read / my name Compleat." A similar verse is engraved on the tombstone of his cousin Kasper Koiner (d. 1856) at a church near the Coiner farm.5 George's sister, Catherine (1797-1866), penned, "When time s[h]all Be and time shall be nomore / Time is upon wing beware of death." In 1849, Elizabeth Coiner, Catherine's sister or daughter, recorded, "My pen is dull my ink is pale / My love to you shall never fale," adding a series of initials that perhaps recalled departed family members. These verses all are safely hidden from public view on the backs and sides of interior drawers; in addition, they are protected behind the locked fall board, suggesting they were intended to be read only by family members.

Inscribed"May 6th, 1836 / David D. Coiner Long Meadows / Augusta County Va / now twenty one years of age" and "M.A. Coiner" are written in ink on the right side of the right document drawer. "Elizabeth Koiner South River / November 2 nd 1849, / My pen is dull my ink is pale / My love to you shall never fale / G.B [?], G.C [?], S.C [?], M.K, E.K, E.K." appears in ink on the left side of the right document drawer. "Michael A / Coiner" is written in ink on the back of the left document drawer. "Youth lik[e] the Spring is full of infirm [?] / [ness] Two whome [?] so ever it may come--" followed by a column of numbers totaled at the bottom, "Being [?] Shipped," "Virginia to wit Hell is this / af--[illegible]o thought full / Bought." and "Michael A. Coiner May the 8nd 1838 / Time once past never returns / John Korge" are written in ink on the left side of the left document drawer. "442 George Korge [?] his hand & pen he / Will write Good But the lord knows / When" and "This drawer my Name shall Ever have when / When I am dead and in my Grave and greedy / worms my body Eat and then you may read / my name Compleat George Koiner" are written in ink on the right side of the left document drawer. Written upside down in the same area is "When time s[h]all Be and time shall be nomore / Time is upon wing beware of death Catherine Koiner / Longmeadow Augusta County Virginia."
MarkingsNone
ProvenanceProbate records, oral tradition, and the interior inscriptions document the desk's descent in the Coiner family of Augusta Co., Va. Probably first owned by George M. Coiner (1758-1840), the piece descended to his daughter, Elizabeth Coiner (1796-1878); to her son, Jonathan Coiner (1820-1899); to his wife, Jemima Coiner; to her daughters, E. Florence Koiner [sic] and Sue M. Funkhouser; to their nephew, Junius Coiner; to his sister, Hattie Coiner (d. 1974); to her husband, Casper Coiner (1889-1975). The desk was purchased at the auction of Casper Coiner's estate by Crumpler's Antiques, Colonial Heights, Va., who sold it to CWF the next year.