Charleston Loan Exhibition

56 Breakfast table Charleston, SC, 1765/1775 Mahogany with mahogany (glue blocks), tulip poplar (inner frame) and ash (fly frame) secondary woods H. 28¾ x W. 23 x D. 26 (closed) inches, D. 26 (open) inches Lent by The Charleston Museum, Charleston, SC, HF 348 Conservation sponsored by Buskirk Restorations In general, the majority of furniture produced in Charleston during the colonial period is overtly British in design and construction. In the latest London fashion, this exquisite breakfast table is closely based on plate number thirty-three in Thomas Chippendale’s The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director (1754). This is one of two similar tables made in the same unidentified workshop but exhibiting the hands of two different carvers. 1 The sophistication of design and construction indicate that both tables were made by British-trained emigrants to Charleston who were fully conversant in the rococo style and urbane shop practices. 2 BSC 1. The other table is in the collection of Middleton Place Foundation. 2. For further reading see: Bradford L. Rauschenberg and John Bivins, Jr. The Furniture of Charleston, Vol. II (Winston-Salem, NC: The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, 2003), 287–291 Dressing chest Charleston, SC, 1760s Mahogany with cypress, mahogany (drawer partitions) and tulip poplar (interior stiles) secondary woods H. 32¼ x W. 36¼ x D. 21 inches Historic Charleston Foundation, Charleston, SC, collection purchase with contributions by Mrs. B. B. McKlintoch, 81.7.1 Conservation supported by Mr. and Mrs. William Mallon Dressing chests of drawers, not dressing tables, were a fashionable means of storing both men’s and ladies’ toiletries in Charleston from the 1750s until the post-Revolutionary War period. Common toiletries for both genders stored in the chests were brushes, combs, paints, patches and powders. Dressing chests were popular companions to the double chest in Charleston, and both were typically found in bed chambers. One of the most outstanding extant examples of the form, this dressing chest retains its original hardware and drawer fittings, in- cluding a hinged mirror and compartments with delicate wooden lids. Typical of other documented examples, the rich mahogany with simple decorative features of this dressing chest, including cock bead- ing, bracket feet and inset quarter columns, gives the object a hand- some simplicity. The scale of the robust quarter columns, in particular, reveals a strong British influence. The cypress secondary wood, as in the double chest, however, firmly establishes the manufacture of this dressing chest in Charleston. BSC