Description:
Small walnut-veneered dressing table which descended in the Ashley family. Originally ordered, with matching high chest of drawers (L2001.6) by the Rev. Jonathan Ashley (1712-1780) of Deerfield from an unknown Wethersfield/Hartford/Windsor workshop. The table descended to his son, Dr. Elihu Ashley (1750-1817) of Deerfield; to his son, Col. Thomas Williams Ashley (1776-1848) of Deerfield; to his son, Jonathan Ashley (b. 1816), of Deerfield; to his son, Thomas Williams Ashley, Jr. (b. 1842); to his son, Charles Hart Ashley (b. 1860-1926); to his son, Jonathan Porter Ashley (1890-1948); to his son, Thomas Williams Ashley (b. 1926); and to his son, Jonathan Porter Ashley (b. 1956), the present donor. Dressing tables, more than other furniture forms, connoted leisure, and their presence measured refinement in rural households. Used by both men and women, dressing tables were impractical for heavy use because they were difficult to sit at and offered limited storage and workspace. The most desirable examples were imported to rural households from urban workshops. This table has a broad overhanging top rimmed with a solid quarter-round molding of solid walnut, over a central drawer flanked by two deeper ones, ogee skirt, and four cabriole legs. The dressing table survives with its original hardware; the veneer on the top of the table has been lost. HD deaccessioned a reproduction of the Ashley family dressing table (57.158) made by Frederick A. Adams in 1957.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+96.059.2 |
