Dressing table

Date1730-1760

MediumBlack walnut and yellow pine

DimensionsOverall: 28 1/2 x 35 3/4 x 20 3/4in

Credit LineMuseum Purchase, The Sara and Fred Hoyt Furniture Fund

Object number2009-139

DescriptionAppearance: Writing or dressing table with rectangular top that overhangs on all sides; narrow drawer in center of front skirt with overlapping, thumbnail molded edges; interior of drawer divided at rear into two sections (dividers possibly added during the late 18th or early 19th centuries); straight skirt; legs square at top to below skirt with molding on outside corners, then rounded with slight kick outward ending in pad feet.

Construction: The top is surface nailed to the front and back rails with 4 "T" nails. Later, 4 modern nails were surface nailed, one into the top of each leg. These nails were hidden with wooden plugs. Rails are tenoned and through pinned into the legs. Drawer runners for the single drawer are mortised into the front and back rails. Drawer guides are integral with the runners.

The drawer sides are dovetailed to the front and back. The drawer bottom, with side to side grain, is nailed with rose head nails to the bottom edge of the back and chamfered on the bottom edge of three sides to fit into dados cut into the front and both sides. A divider forming a full width compartment at the rear of the drawer is set into dados in both drawer sides. The compartment is divided into two equal sections by a second divider set into dados in the back of the drawer and the first divider. Cut nails from the bottom and sides hold the compartments in place, indicating that they were added at a later date. The original drawer pull, is a shaped back plate with posts and bail.
ProvenanceThis table descended in the Carter and Wickham families of Hickory Hill plantation in Hanover Country, Va. The consignor to the vendor was only one or two generations removed from Hickory Hill. Four Saint-Mémin portraits of Robert Carter (b. 1774), his wife, Mary Nelson Carter (1774-1808), John Wickham (1763-1839), and his second wife, Elizabeth Seldon McClurg, descended with the table.

Hickory Hill was long an appendage to Shirley Plantation in Charles City County, much of it having come into possession of the Carter family by a deed dated March 2, 1734. The first dwelling house at Hickory Hill was built and the garden begun in 1820, when William Fanning Wickham, son of John Wickham, a notable attorney in Richmond, and his wife, Anne Butler (née Carter) Wickham, who was born at Shirley Plantation, made it their home.