Description:
Chamber table or chest-on-frame with a drawer, made of oak with a hard pine top, which may be a replacement, and drawer linings and applied split bosses of maple. Chamber tables, which are best described as small lift-top chests with one drawer beneath supported on turned legs, have frame and panel construction with mortise-and-tenon joinery. They functioned as dressing tables, holding personal effects in the bedroom in the interior of the case and drawer, which were divided by partitions. This rectangular, molded top covers a deep compartment, decorated with two recessed panels, circular bosses, amd ball-turned split spindles. The long drawer has carved lunettes and a wooden knob, with the same split spindles on either side. All four legs are turned oak with vase-shaped, segmented turnings above rectangular posts and turned feet, connected with channeled, rectangular stretchers. Prototypes for the lunette or foliate carvings can be found in English furniture from Norfolk, Dorsetshire, Gloucestershire, and Hampshire counties, demonstrating the influence of English regional decorative traditions on seventeenth-century American joined furniture.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+58.051 |
