POSSIBLY NEW YORK, CIRCA 1840

With its cylindrical body and shelved interior, this nightstand served as a discrete storage unit for a chamber pot and was also known as a "pillar commode." A similar example of the form in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is documented to Duncan Phyfe by an 1841 bill of sale (see Peter M. Kenny et al., Duncan Phyfe: Master Cabinetmaker in New York (New York, 2011), p. 253, plate 57).