Images(3)

Desk and bookcase

Date1810-1820

OriginAmerica, Virginia, Richmond

MediumMahogany, white pine, tulip poplar, and yellow pine

DimensionsOH: 66 1/8"; OW: 35 1/2"; OD: 22"

Credit LineGift of The Burlington-Gwathmey Memorial Foundation.

Object number1988-443

DescriptionConstruction: The frame of the cornice is open dovetailed together and further secured with a medial brace screwed in place through the front and rear rails. Veneer on the front and sides conceals evidence of these joints. The flat upper molding on the cornice is flush-mounted to the tops of the rails and to a smaller cove molding that is glued and nailed in place. A cock bead is glued and nailed to the front and sides of the cornice frame at its joint with the bookcase carcass. The bookcase top board is blind dovetailed, and the bottom board is half-blind dovetailed to the case sides. The back features a wide vertical batten nailed to the case top and bottom boards. It is flanked by a pair of boards that are beveled on their sides, set into grooves on the edges of the batten and the bookcase sides, and nailed at the top and bottom. The fall board consists of a wide horizontal white pine board with a thin butt-joined mahogany strip at the top and a vertical tongue-and-groove white pine batten on each side. The outer surface is fully veneered, and the inner surface features a narrow band of mahogany veneer that originally centered a textile (probably broadcloth) lining. A pair of butt hinges join the fall board to the forward edge of the bottom board. The principal interior shelf and the dividers are dadoed in place, and the upper brackets are attached to small glue blocks. The small interior shelves rest on thin glue blocks and may be later in-use additions. The bookcase was originally secured to the table with screws set through the bottom board into the table top.

The table top consists of a single board that extends half the depth of the frame and is nailed to the tops of the rails. Narrow extensions the same thickness as the top board are nailed and glued to the top edges of the exposed side rails in order to support the bookcase. Further supporting the table top is a thin medial brace that is open-tenoned and nailed into the rear rail and open-tenoned into the veneered upper drawer blade, which in turn is open dovetailed into the tops of the front legs. The veneered lower blade is double-tenoned into the legs, as are the side and rear rails. Thin drawer stops are glued to the top of the lower blade. Drawer runners are nailed to the inside of the side rails and surmounted by glued-on drawer guides.

The drawer is dovetailed. The bottom board is beveled along the front and sides, set into corresponding grooves, and flush-nailed at the rear. The drawer front is veneered.

Materials: Mahogany bookcase sides, moldings, table side rails, table top, legs, top strip on fall board, cornice veneers, fall-board veneers, drawer front veneers, and drawer blade veneers; white pine cornice frame, bookcase top and bottom boards, table back rail, and some backboard components; tulip poplar bookcase dividers, pigeonhole brackets, drawer bottom, drawer sides, and drawer back; yellow pine drawer runners and remaining backboard components.
Label Text"Plantation desk" is a late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century term that refers to the combination of a shallow bookcase and a single-drawer table. The front of the bookcase often appears to be a pair of standard doors but is actually a bottom-hinged fall board as is the case with this object. When open, the inner surface of the fall board provides a conveniently slanted writing and reading surface. Produced as early as the 1790s, the form became quite popular in the South between 1820 and 1850. Yet the so-called plantation desk did not originate in the South but was rooted in British neoclassical cabinetmaking traditions. In fact, a number of highly refined examples were produced in New York and other northern cities early in the nineteenth century. The New-York Book of Prices for Cabinet & Chair Work (1802) in which the form appears notes that the contemporary name for a desk of this design was "writing table and bookcase."

The CWF writing table and bookcase is one of the few urban southern examples known. Made in Richmond, Virginia, it was originally owned by the Gwathmey family of Burlington plantation in King William County, about thirty miles northeast of the capital. The Richmond attribution is based on the turning pattern at the tops of the legs. Consisting of two rings over a partial cove, this distinctive arrangement appears on countless Richmond chairs, tables, and case pieces. While this simple pattern may have been produced in more than one Richmond cabinet shop, it is equally possible that a single turner made the legs and sold them to different cabinetmakers, a common practice. One of the turners listed in the Richmond records may be tentatively associated with this group. Richmond cabinet- and chair maker James Rockwood labeled a pair of late neoclassical card tables with legs of this form about 1820 (MESDA research file 6156). His kinsman, Curtis Rockwood, a professional turner, worked there from about 1815 until 1823.

The inlaid ornaments at the tops of the leg stiles and in the cornice frieze contrast with the locally made legs. The inlays were probably imported from Great Britain, where specialized inlay makers produced large quantities of similar neoclassical inlays for export to America.
InscribedNone.
MarkingsNone.
ProvenanceThe writing table and bookcase descended in the Gwathmey family of Burlington plantation in King William Co., Va. It remained on the estate until much of the family's collection was given to CWF in 1988.