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Lot Essay
Displaying urban traits from Annapolis and Baltimore, this high style Federal sideboard with its elegant form and decorative inlay was very fashionable in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The sideboard was a fairly new form, introduced about 1785, functioning not only as a server for food and drink in the primary rooms of entertainment-- drawing rooms and dining rooms-- but as a piece of presentation furniture designed to give a grand impression.
Exhibiting characteristics of John Shaw (1745-1829) with its recurrent inlaid oval paterae, use of poplar and yellow pine drawer linings, string inlay on drawer fronts and outline of top, this sideboard may have been created by a cabinetmaker familiar with Shaw's work. For related examples see Elder and Bartlett, John Shaw Cabinetmaker of Annapolis (Baltimore, 1983), figs. 24, 27, 40 and 53.
Exhibiting characteristics of John Shaw (1745-1829) with its recurrent inlaid oval paterae, use of poplar and yellow pine drawer linings, string inlay on drawer fronts and outline of top, this sideboard may have been created by a cabinetmaker familiar with Shaw's work. For related examples see Elder and Bartlett, John Shaw Cabinetmaker of Annapolis (Baltimore, 1983), figs. 24, 27, 40 and 53.