Federal Inlaid and Figured Mahogany Sideboard

Object Details

Related Objects

Federal Inlaid and Figured Mahogany Serpentine Sideboard

Unknown
ca. 1790-1810

wood; mahogany; mahogany veneer; cherry; eastern white pine; ash; yellow-poplar

Object Essay

Eight-legged sideboards are rare indeed. This one is a spare but elegant example of the expensive and unusual form. An even more elaborate example is at Winterthur, a frequently illustrated piece included in the landmark 1929 Girl Scout Loan Exhibition.^{1_{An exhibition photograph of a gallery showing this sideboard is reproduced in Wendy A. Cooper, “In Praise of America, 1650–1830. An Exhibition at the National Gallery of Art,” Antiques 117, no. 3 (March 1980), 605.}}

In the full Adamesque style—ovals juxtaposed against rectangles, lights against darks, convex against concave shapes—Winterthur’s example epitomizes the aesthetic theory that revolutionized English taste in the second half of the 18th century.^{2_{Montgomery 1966, 373–74, no. 360.}} That piece is more fluid in form than the Department of State’s sideboard, which is somewhat more rectilinear, but both share certain features: the overall D-shape, the front-facing legs, and the configuration of the bottle drawers, cupboards, and upper drawers.

In decorative effect, the sideboard in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms relates more directly to another sideboard in the Collection (see Acc. No. 66.22), both having gleaming veneered surfaces and line inlays that provide the basis of the ornament. Most decorative of all the elements on the eight-legged sideboard are the parallel satinwood rectangular panels and the bellflower and oval inlays on the six tapered front legs. A sideboard formerly owned by the antiquarian Luke Vincent Lockwood features the same distinctive inlay, considered to be typical of New York cabinetwork.^{3_{Illustrated in Lockwood, 1, fig. 203, and in Sack Collection, 33, P4775. Loop and bellflower inlay and other inlays found in New York and New Jersey furniture are illustrated in Montgomery 1966, 38, no. 110.}} This inlay is also found on a New York sideboard labeled by William Whitehead (working 1792–1799).^{4_{Cooper 1980, 9.}}

Notwithstanding the relationship between the Collection’s sideboard and other New York examples, a very similar documented sideboard in the Wadsworth Atheneum was made by the Hartford cabinetmaker Aaron Chapin (1753–1838), suggesting a stylistic link between these two cities.^{5_{Illustrated in Comstock 1962, no. 512; and in Phillip Johnston, “Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century in the Wadsworth Atheneum,” Antiques 115, no. 5 (May 1979), 1022. Related sideboards are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Yale University Art Gallery (see Ward 1988, nos. 217, 218, and 222).}}

Page Talbott

Excerpted from Clement E. Conger, et al. Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1991.