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Lot Essay
...the rising and falling, advancing and receding, with the convexity and concavity...serve to produce an agreeable and diversified contour, that groups and contrasts like a picture and creates a variety of light and shade, which gives great spirit, beauty, and effect to the composition.
-Robert and James Adam, The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, Esquires, no. 1 (London, 1773), p. 3. Cited in Charles F. Montgomery, American Furniture: The Federal Period (New York, 1966), p. 373.
This magnificent eight-legged sideboard, with its facade of composite curves, well illustrates Robert Adam's principle of movement in architectural design. In his discussion of the sideboard at Winterthur Museum of the same form (fig. 2), Charles F. Montgomery quoted the above excerpt and remarked that it was the most expensive model available during the Federal era. The basic form was described in the 1796 New York price book as "a Celleret Side-board with Elliptic Middle and Ogee on Each Side" and was priced at L9 12 shillings. This sideboard, however, with its two extra legs, array of inlaid ornament and width of eighty inches, was considerably more elaborate than the standard plain six-foot version with six legs and would have been priced accordingly (Montgomery, pp. 373-374).
Few New York sideboards survive of comparable quality. The Blair Collection sideboard is virtually identical to one that descended in the Hewlett family of Long Island, New York (fig. 1) and with the same vocabulary of inlaid decoration, both were probably the work of a single cabinetmaking shop. Small differences, such as the greater height of the striated frieze and astragal (rather than "Gothic top") reserves on the bottle drawers on the Blair Collection example, indicate that these were custom-made pieces, each designed and crafted for a special commission. Other New York sideboards with eight legs include an example at Yale University Art Galleries labeled by James Tabele with the same form but variant inlay. For two others with ovolo rather than ogee sides, see Clement E. Conger and Alexandra W. Rollins, Treasures of State (New York, 1991), cat. 135 and Sotheby's New York, June 17, 1999, lot 200).
Costly in its day, the sideboard was also the most expensive piece of furniture purchased by Mrs. Blair. As recorded in her 1943 inventory, she paid $17,000 in 1926, a sum that is more than double what she paid for any other piece and even exceeds the $13,000 paid in 1919 for the portrait of George Washington by Charles Willson Peale, lot 547. She bought the sideboard from the firm of Collings and Collings and a letter of its offer reveals the often contentious nature of antiques dealing in the 1920s. Evidently the collector George A. Cluett tried to procure the sideboard initially from the Smith Collection in Hartford, but having been "double-crossed" by Mr. Cluett on another transaction, Albert Collings wrote that he felt "justified" in selling the sideboard to her. He also stated that the price of "seventeen" was a reduced sum and considering it hers, intended to go to Hartford and "get the finest piece that ever came to New York" (Letter, Albert Collings to Mrs. Blair, March 31, 1926, Blair Collection Papers). In 1943, the sideboard was in storage in one of the guest rooms at Blairhame and had probably been used by the Blairs in their main house before it was closed down (1943 inventory).
-Robert and James Adam, The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, Esquires, no. 1 (London, 1773), p. 3. Cited in Charles F. Montgomery, American Furniture: The Federal Period (New York, 1966), p. 373.
This magnificent eight-legged sideboard, with its facade of composite curves, well illustrates Robert Adam's principle of movement in architectural design. In his discussion of the sideboard at Winterthur Museum of the same form (fig. 2), Charles F. Montgomery quoted the above excerpt and remarked that it was the most expensive model available during the Federal era. The basic form was described in the 1796 New York price book as "a Celleret Side-board with Elliptic Middle and Ogee on Each Side" and was priced at L9 12 shillings. This sideboard, however, with its two extra legs, array of inlaid ornament and width of eighty inches, was considerably more elaborate than the standard plain six-foot version with six legs and would have been priced accordingly (Montgomery, pp. 373-374).
Few New York sideboards survive of comparable quality. The Blair Collection sideboard is virtually identical to one that descended in the Hewlett family of Long Island, New York (fig. 1) and with the same vocabulary of inlaid decoration, both were probably the work of a single cabinetmaking shop. Small differences, such as the greater height of the striated frieze and astragal (rather than "Gothic top") reserves on the bottle drawers on the Blair Collection example, indicate that these were custom-made pieces, each designed and crafted for a special commission. Other New York sideboards with eight legs include an example at Yale University Art Galleries labeled by James Tabele with the same form but variant inlay. For two others with ovolo rather than ogee sides, see Clement E. Conger and Alexandra W. Rollins, Treasures of State (New York, 1991), cat. 135 and Sotheby's New York, June 17, 1999, lot 200).
Costly in its day, the sideboard was also the most expensive piece of furniture purchased by Mrs. Blair. As recorded in her 1943 inventory, she paid $17,000 in 1926, a sum that is more than double what she paid for any other piece and even exceeds the $13,000 paid in 1919 for the portrait of George Washington by Charles Willson Peale, lot 547. She bought the sideboard from the firm of Collings and Collings and a letter of its offer reveals the often contentious nature of antiques dealing in the 1920s. Evidently the collector George A. Cluett tried to procure the sideboard initially from the Smith Collection in Hartford, but having been "double-crossed" by Mr. Cluett on another transaction, Albert Collings wrote that he felt "justified" in selling the sideboard to her. He also stated that the price of "seventeen" was a reduced sum and considering it hers, intended to go to Hartford and "get the finest piece that ever came to New York" (Letter, Albert Collings to Mrs. Blair, March 31, 1926, Blair Collection Papers). In 1943, the sideboard was in storage in one of the guest rooms at Blairhame and had probably been used by the Blairs in their main house before it was closed down (1943 inventory).