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Desk and Bookcase

Date1770-1800

OriginAmerica, Virginia, Sussex County (probably)

MediumBlack walnut with yellow pine, oak, and probably tulip poplar secondary woods

DimensionsOH: 84 1/4"; OW: 40 1/2"; OD: 21 3/4".

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1930-109

DescriptionAppearance: Desk and bookcase in two sections. Flat top with molded dentil cornice. Bookcase with two Gothic paneled doors concealing three adjustable shelves. Desk with fallboard concealing writing interior with multiple pigeon-holes and small drawers but no prospect door. Lower case composed of two short over three full-width graduated drawers. Case supported by four straight bracket feet.

Construction: On the bookcase, the side panels are open dovetailed to the top board and half-blind dovetailed to the bottom boards. All of the rear corners are mitered. The cornice is nailed in place and surmounts a smaller, nailed-on, transitional molding faced by applied dentils. The vertical butt-joined backboards are nailed into rabbets on all four sides, and the bottom boards are faced at the front with a flush-nailed blade. Three interior book shelves each have three corresponding dado slots on either side for adjustment. The door panels, raised on the front and flat on the back, are set into pinned mortised-and-tenoned frames with stepped shoulders. The rails are through-tenoned on the outer edges. A separate, flush-mounted, molded strip forms the leading edge of the right door.

On the desk, the side panels are half-blind dovetailed to the top and bottom boards, and the rear corners are mitered. The small quarter-round waist molding is sprig-nailed to the top board. The backboards are like those on the bookcase. The fall board is through-tenoned to a double-mitered batten on either end. The writing shelf and its butt-joined dustboard are set into dadoes on the case sides, and the exposed front edge is open half-dovetailed in place. The fall-board supports have tongue-and-grooved, thumbnail-molded facades. The drawer dividers are open dovetailed at the top and bottom, while the drawer blades are half-dovetailed to the case sides. The thin drawer runners are flush-nailed to the case sides. Below the bottom drawer, thin runners and a single blade are flush-nailed to the bottom board. The integral base molding and feet are mitered at the front and rabbeted at the top to receive the desk section. This assembly is secured with small nails driven through either side and from below on both the front and sides. The side faces of the rear feet are nailed to diagonal rear brackets, which in turn are wrought-nailed to the case bottom. The front feet are backed by large, shaped, vertical, nailed-on glue blocks.

On the desk interior, a lower plinth with a molded leading edge supports the drawer section. The pigeonhole dividers and shelves are mitered and set into V-shaped dadoes. The central five brackets are backed by chamfered glue blocks, while the two end brackets front traditionally dovetailed shallow drawers with bottom panels that are glued into shallow rabbets on the sides and rear and set into grooves at the front. The interior drawers have nailed-on brass knobs and are traditionally dovetailed, with mitered dovetails at the top rear and deeply chamfered bottom panels set into grooves all the way around. The exception is the long central drawer, which is constructed like the large case drawers.

Traditional dovetail joinery is found on the case drawers. Their beveled bottom panels are set into grooves on the front and sides. The rear edge is also beveled to allow for nail-head clearance.

Materials: Black walnut upper case top, all case sides, moldings, doors, fall board, fall board supports, drawer fronts, drawer blades, drawer dividers, pigeonhole brackets and dividers, writing shelf and plinth, and exposed parts of integral feet; yellow pine backboards, large drawer runners, bottom boards on upper and lower cases, top board on lower case, bottoms of interior drawers, back of central interior drawer, large drawer bottoms, large drawer sides, large drawer backs, bookcase shelves, and rear faces of rear bracket feet; oak interior drawer sides and backs; probably tulip poplar foot blocks.
Label TextMade in rural Southside Virginia, probably in Sussex County, this desk and bookcase exhibits several ornamental elements that suggest its maker was either an immigrant from rural Britain or the former apprentice of one. The well-shaped, ogee-pointed arches that top the bookcase doors are common on contemporary case furniture and wainscot chairs and settles from provincial Britain, but they are relatively rare in America. The novel double-pointed central projections that extend downward from the curved insteps of the bracket feet are also uncommon in American work, although they are conceptually related to rural British examples. While many of the British woodworkers who came to the South were the products of urban centers like London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, others were clearly trained in Britain's smaller towns and rural districts.

The structural aspects of this rural desk and bookcase are quite different from those of urban Virginia models. While some elements were over-built, others were executed quickly with little regard for long-term stability. In the first category are the dovetail joints that fasten the sides of both cases to their top and bottom boards. In every instance, the last dovetail pin at the back of the case is carefully mitered, a time-consuming practice that gives the rarely seen back of the desk a tidier appearance but adds little to its structural integrity. The usually concealed rear corners of the writing interior drawers are also mitered, and the rear edges of the bottom panels on the case drawers are neatly chiseled out to permit the countersinking of the nail heads. The backs of both cases are set into rabbets on four sides instead of the usual three, and the end battens on the fall board are through-tenoned and double-mitered on both ends even though a single miter joint on each would have taken less time to execute and been more sound structurally.

At the same time, the maker employed several shortcuts. The lower case lacks dustboards. Instead, the drawers are supported on thin runners flush-nailed to the carcass, a practice that inhibits the unavoidable expansion and contraction of the side panels and almost invariably causes them to split. Despite the considerable effort expended on production of the decorative door panels, the shaped feet, and the dentil-molded cornice, all of the dovetailed joinery on the front of the desk is fully exposed. Another shortcut was used to produce the bookcase shelves. In most southern bookcases, the shelves are made of a cabinet-grade wood or supplied with a molded cabinet-grade facing. Here the original shelves are made entirely of unstained, unmolded yellow pine. These oddly juxtaposed practices imply that some artisans built furniture just as they had been taught by their masters without questioning efficiency or practicality of technique.

A number of the unusual details on this desk and bookcase are reminiscent of those on pieces by cabinetmaker Mardun Vaughan Eventon (d. 1778), suggesting the maker of this desk may have had links to him or to one of the shops he influenced. Similarities between this desk and a signed Eventon example (CWF accession 1988-437) include the use of nailed-on runners instead of dustboards, the exposed joinery on the front of each case, the mitered dovetailing on the drawers, and the integral feet and base moldings. Both use pairs of extremely shallow drawers as candle slides. The slides on the Eventon desk are situated in the bottom rail of the bookcase; those on the present desk are concealed behind the two outermost pigeonhole valances in the writing section.

Attribution of this desk and bookcase to Southside Virginia, probably Sussex County, is suggested by several early inscriptions on the small interior drawers. The bottom of one features the names James M. Greene, James A. Brown, James Simmons, James R. Graves, and M. H. Moore, most of whom appear in Southside records between 1780 and 1810. The drawer is also inscribed "Sussex County Va" and "Comans Well," a late eighteenth-century Sussex County spa town in central Southside. Several pieces of furniture by the same maker also have Southside histories. They include a desk that descended in the Cobb family of Halifax County, North Carolina, about forty miles south of Sussex County, Virginia, and a desk and bookcase originally owned by the Cabaniss family of Pittsylvania County, Virginia, in western Southside. Both have related writing interiors characterized by pigeonholes of varying height with deeply scalloped valances. These pieces also feature mitered interior drawer construction. While the feet on the Cobb desk lack the central projection of the CWF desk and bookcase, they exhibit the same rounded lobe just below the base molding and identical construction.

InscribedVarious pencil inscriptions on underside, inside bottom, and on a side of one interior desk drawer include "Jas. M. Greene" (twice), "Jas. A. Brown," "James Simmons" (this transcription of the first name of Simmons may be incorrect), "James R. Graves" (three times), "M. H. Moore / Comans Well / 1866 / Sussex Co. Va," "M. H. Moore," "Comans Well," "March," "March 12, 18[48 or 68]," "2 September," "Comis," and "3333 / 3333 / 6666 / 6666 / 13332." A nineteenth-century ink stamp, "Andrew J. Greene," (previously Andrew was read as Ludlow but it is clearly Andrew) appears inside the left bookcase door. There are assorted illegible chalk marks on the case drawers. "9609/48" on the desk top board and "9609/11" on the bookcase backboard are written in modern white wax pencil.
MarkingsOriginal construction marks are scratched in roman numerals on the interior drawers.