Description:
William and Mary dressing table made in Hampshire County, possibly in Deerfield. It purportedly descended in the Billings and Williams family of Hatfield and Deerfield. Louisa Hubbard Billings (1862-1949) lived in the house on Deerfield’s Old Main Street that a collateral ancestor, Dr. Thomas Williams (1718-1775), built in 1748. Both she and Dr. Thomas Williams descended from Rev. William Williams (1665-1741) of Hatfield. This dressing table might have belonged to Rev. Williams’s son (and Louisa’s great-great-grandfather) Israel Williams (1709-1788) and his wife, Sarah Chester Williams (1707-1770) who married circa 1731. Even though they were geographically removed from coastal style-centers such as Portsmouth, Salem, and Boston, residents of the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts were aware of, and selectively adapted, new furniture designs as quickly as colonists elsewhere in America. But furniture made of lightweight, dovetailed boards in the William and Mary style is rare in the Connecticut River Valley; the acceptability of joined furniture until the 1720s and 1730s was reinforced by the versatility of joiners who made housing and furniture in traditional ways. A family member commissioned this dressing table, with its flared, turned legs, cross-stretchers and dovetailed case (possibly originally decorated with fanciful black and red grain painting, or possibly japanning) as a statement of sophisticated, urbane taste. When the new furniture-making concept finally became fashionable, cabinetmakers bypassed the earlier William and Mary style and designed furniture in the Queen Anne style. Perhaps commissioned en suite with a high chest similar to the Frary family high chest, this dressing table may have been intended as part of a “wedding portion” presented to a daughter at the time of her marriage. As such, it represents a shift among the region’s well-to-do families away from the bestowal of heavy oaken joined, carved chests often inscribed with the young recipient’s maiden-name initials, to the gifting of furniture that followed designs popular beyond the region’s borders. This dressing table bears idiosyncratic construction marks on its drawers (a system of vertical slashes penetrated by large arcs) identical to those on a high chest with turned legs (replaced) in the collection, 69.0299, owned by the Frary family. (The names of Eunice [b. 1721] and Obadiah Frary (1717-1777), likely grandchildren of Samson Frary (ca. 1735-1804) who built the Frary house, are inscribed on bottom of several drawers). The rectangular table's top is secured to the frame with square pins. The backboard is blind-dovetailed to the sides. The scalloped and arched bottom rail (with beading nailed to its bottom edge) is fitted into cutouts in the corner blocks and nailed. Round tenons projecting from the upper ends of the trumpet-turned legs fit into round mortices in the frame glue blocks; round tenons projecting from their lower ends fit through holes drilled in the serpentine, lapped X stretchers and fit into round tenons in the feet. Single-arch molding is nailed to the frame around the drawers. The brasses on the three drawers are old, but not original. Proper right rear foot is white pine, the proper right rear leg is red maple, and the proper left side of the applied skirt's cockbeading is also red maple. The drawer fronts and sides, cross stretchers, and top are white pine.
Label Text:
Early Baroque furniture made in the Connecticut River Valley of western Massachusetts is rare. Few local joiners possessed the tools and training needed to design and construct furniture in the new style that had become popular elsewhere by the 1690s.This dressing table is an exception. It may have been commissioned en suite with a high chest and placed in a bed chamber with a standing looking glass on top to serve the dressing and grooming needs of its owner.
Original owner:
The table came with the family history of having “originally belonged to Miss Billings and her ancestors—the Williams family.” Miss Louisa Hubbard Billings (1862-1949) lived in the house on Deerfield’s Old Main Street that a collateral ancestor, Dr. Thomas Williams (1718-1775), built in 1748. Both she and Dr. Thomas Williams descended from Rev. William Williams (1665-1741) of Hatfield. Perhaps Rev. Williams’s son (and Louisa’s great great grandfather) Israel Williams (1705-1788) and his wife, Sarah Chester Williams (1713-1724), first owned the dressing table.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+1366 |
