Lot Essay
This table descended in the family of Luman Reed with a history of manufacture by Duncan Phyfe, and it may be any number of Dressing Bureaus listed in the various bedrooms of Reed's 1836 inventory.
This table is directly fashioned after a design for a "Chiffonniere" in plate 367 of Pierre de la Mesangere's 1812 issue of Muebles et Objets de Gout (pictured above). Phyfe clearly had access to a copy of the plate and possibly subscribed to the designs, which were published in installments from 1802 into the 1830s. His 1854 inventory lists, "1 lot of Cabinet Makers Books & Drawings" located in the open garret: the drawings could indeed have included La Mesangere's plates (Brown, Duncan Phyfe (Master's thesis, University of Delaware, 1978), p. 43).
Lumin Reed's interests were certainly cosmopolitan and he was well aware of the fashion for classical taste and French decorative arts. Reed himself may have received the installments of Muebles, and it may have been at his urgings that Phyfe manufactured furniture from the current French designs, after which this tables is certainly modeled.
This table is directly fashioned after a design for a "Chiffonniere" in plate 367 of Pierre de la Mesangere's 1812 issue of Muebles et Objets de Gout (pictured above). Phyfe clearly had access to a copy of the plate and possibly subscribed to the designs, which were published in installments from 1802 into the 1830s. His 1854 inventory lists, "1 lot of Cabinet Makers Books & Drawings" located in the open garret: the drawings could indeed have included La Mesangere's plates (Brown, Duncan Phyfe (Master's thesis, University of Delaware, 1978), p. 43).
Lumin Reed's interests were certainly cosmopolitan and he was well aware of the fashion for classical taste and French decorative arts. Reed himself may have received the installments of Muebles, and it may have been at his urgings that Phyfe manufactured furniture from the current French designs, after which this tables is certainly modeled.