Lot Essay
With reversing curves, pronounced turnings and varying surfaces, this dressing table epitomizes the William and Mary style and stands as an important document of early American imitation paintwork. An extension of the European Baroque, the style was introduced to America by immigrant English cabinetmakers in the late seventeenth century and remained popular until the 1730s. New construction techniques enabled cabinetmakers to create case furniture that was lighter and taller than the products of their joiner-predecessors. Dovetailed, instead of framed, cases allowed for thinner boards, but also made for weaker joints between the cases and the legs. As a result, few William and Mary high chests and dressing tables survive with their original legs.
This table is part of a small group of veneered dressing tables with similar skirt profiles and leg turnings made in early 18th-century Boston. These are in the following collections: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (fig. 1), The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Winterthur Museum and the Yale University Art Gallery (for further information see Richard H. Randall, Jr., American Furniture in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (Boston, 1965), cat. 43; Winterthur Museum no. 58.584 and 58.574; Gerald W.R. Ward, American Case Furniture (New Haven, 1988), cat. 93; the Decorative Arts Photographic Collection, Winterthur Museum, no. 86. 378). All except one Winterthur example, which bears burl ash veneers, are walnut veneered. Various permutations of arches, C-scrolls and ogees define the skirt profiles and share the same design as those in fig. 1 and on the table offered here; also, the stretchers on the table offered here are similar to those on the Winterthur and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston examples. This group is related to a famous slate-top table made in Boston and bearing an imported Swiss top, that descended in the family of Thomas Hinckley, Governor of Plymouth Colony in the late seventeenth century (Jonathan L. Fairbanks and Elizabeth Bidwell Bates, American Furniture 1620 to the Present (New York, 1981), p. 66).
With original paintwork simulating an exotic veneer on its legs and stretchers, this dressing table is a remarkable survival of early faux painting. The red and black mottled paintwork imitates tightly grained burlwood that contrasts with the more striated veneer on the upper case. Frequently hailed as a less expensive option to veneering, such imitation paintwork was also employed when veneering was impossible or impractical. Veneers available at the time were too thick to adhere to the round surfaces of the legs and it was not until the early nineteenth century that veneers could be cut sufficiently thin to adorn columns on Classical furniture. Besides this dressing table, little evidence of paint graining on William and Mary American furniture exists today. One dressing table at Winterthur (no. 58.574) bears similar paintwork on its flat surfaces that may imitate oyster marquetry (Phillip M. Johnston, Courts and Colonies: The William and Mary Style in Holland, England, and America (New York, 1988), p. 151). More plentiful, both in surviving woodwork and period documents, is the evidence for architectural graining. The earliest New England documents detailing such work are bills from 1707 issued by Katherine Childs, widow of the Boston decorative painter Thomas, that refer to painting in "walnut" and "wenscot" colors (cited in Abbott Lowell Cummings and Richard M. Candee, "Colonial and Federal America: Accounts of Early Painting Practices," in Roger W. Moss, ed., Paint in America (Boston, 1994, p.19).
This table is part of a small group of veneered dressing tables with similar skirt profiles and leg turnings made in early 18th-century Boston. These are in the following collections: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (fig. 1), The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Winterthur Museum and the Yale University Art Gallery (for further information see Richard H. Randall, Jr., American Furniture in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (Boston, 1965), cat. 43; Winterthur Museum no. 58.584 and 58.574; Gerald W.R. Ward, American Case Furniture (New Haven, 1988), cat. 93; the Decorative Arts Photographic Collection, Winterthur Museum, no. 86. 378). All except one Winterthur example, which bears burl ash veneers, are walnut veneered. Various permutations of arches, C-scrolls and ogees define the skirt profiles and share the same design as those in fig. 1 and on the table offered here; also, the stretchers on the table offered here are similar to those on the Winterthur and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston examples. This group is related to a famous slate-top table made in Boston and bearing an imported Swiss top, that descended in the family of Thomas Hinckley, Governor of Plymouth Colony in the late seventeenth century (Jonathan L. Fairbanks and Elizabeth Bidwell Bates, American Furniture 1620 to the Present (New York, 1981), p. 66).
With original paintwork simulating an exotic veneer on its legs and stretchers, this dressing table is a remarkable survival of early faux painting. The red and black mottled paintwork imitates tightly grained burlwood that contrasts with the more striated veneer on the upper case. Frequently hailed as a less expensive option to veneering, such imitation paintwork was also employed when veneering was impossible or impractical. Veneers available at the time were too thick to adhere to the round surfaces of the legs and it was not until the early nineteenth century that veneers could be cut sufficiently thin to adorn columns on Classical furniture. Besides this dressing table, little evidence of paint graining on William and Mary American furniture exists today. One dressing table at Winterthur (no. 58.574) bears similar paintwork on its flat surfaces that may imitate oyster marquetry (Phillip M. Johnston, Courts and Colonies: The William and Mary Style in Holland, England, and America (New York, 1988), p. 151). More plentiful, both in surviving woodwork and period documents, is the evidence for architectural graining. The earliest New England documents detailing such work are bills from 1707 issued by Katherine Childs, widow of the Boston decorative painter Thomas, that refer to painting in "walnut" and "wenscot" colors (cited in Abbott Lowell Cummings and Richard M. Candee, "Colonial and Federal America: Accounts of Early Painting Practices," in Roger W. Moss, ed., Paint in America (Boston, 1994, p.19).