Lot Essay
In the dining room there is always a very elegant
mahogany sideboard decorated with the silver and
metal vessels of the household as well as with
beautiful cut glass and crystal.
-Baron Axel Leonhard Klinckowstrom, New York, 1820
This quote underscores the expectation of and emphasis on formal dining in the nineteenth century. As formal dining was at the center of social entertaining in urban communities, the presence of a sideboard in one's home signified awareness of and compliance with current fashion associated with the social etiquette of the era. (Quote from Waters and Brown, brochure for An Elegant Assortment, exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, 1933).
This sideboard is made in the Regency style, popular in England during the early nineteenth century and adopted by American craftsmen. Characterized by elegant simplicity, furniture in this manner is distinguished by its clean lines and restrained, yet stately appearance. Sideboards of this form are often associated with Duncan Phyfe.
A sideboard of the same design, but of smaller proportions, shares a nearly identical brass rail and splashboard, stop-fluted columns with waterleaf-carved capitals and similar feet. Both sideboards were almost assuredly made in the same shop, and both were owned by Ronald Kane subsequent to one another (see, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nineteenth Century America (New York 1970), fig. 18). The carved pinecones that embellish the splashboard of this sideboard with their original gilding and verde paint, were occasionally selected by New York craftsmen as a design motif and are seen on a number of closely related sideboards. For sideboards of similar form and embellishments, see, Comstock, American Furniture, (Pennsylvania 1962), fig. 525 this example is in the Henry Ford Museum; also, McClelland, Duncan Phyfe and the English Regency, (New York, 193), pl. 154, 155, 279. Miller, American Antique Furniture, vol. 1 (New York, 1937):561, fig. 1010.
mahogany sideboard decorated with the silver and
metal vessels of the household as well as with
beautiful cut glass and crystal.
-Baron Axel Leonhard Klinckowstrom, New York, 1820
This quote underscores the expectation of and emphasis on formal dining in the nineteenth century. As formal dining was at the center of social entertaining in urban communities, the presence of a sideboard in one's home signified awareness of and compliance with current fashion associated with the social etiquette of the era. (Quote from Waters and Brown, brochure for An Elegant Assortment, exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, 1933).
This sideboard is made in the Regency style, popular in England during the early nineteenth century and adopted by American craftsmen. Characterized by elegant simplicity, furniture in this manner is distinguished by its clean lines and restrained, yet stately appearance. Sideboards of this form are often associated with Duncan Phyfe.
A sideboard of the same design, but of smaller proportions, shares a nearly identical brass rail and splashboard, stop-fluted columns with waterleaf-carved capitals and similar feet. Both sideboards were almost assuredly made in the same shop, and both were owned by Ronald Kane subsequent to one another (see, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nineteenth Century America (New York 1970), fig. 18). The carved pinecones that embellish the splashboard of this sideboard with their original gilding and verde paint, were occasionally selected by New York craftsmen as a design motif and are seen on a number of closely related sideboards. For sideboards of similar form and embellishments, see, Comstock, American Furniture, (Pennsylvania 1962), fig. 525 this example is in the Henry Ford Museum; also, McClelland, Duncan Phyfe and the English Regency, (New York, 193), pl. 154, 155, 279. Miller, American Antique Furniture, vol. 1 (New York, 1937):561, fig. 1010.