The chest-on-stand formerly in William “Bill” K. du Pont’s collection is, as both Sotheby’s catalogue entry (lot 505) and Pook & Pook’s catalogue entry from October 2013 say, the only example of this form with any sort of inlay. Swirling light-wood stringing terminating in single and clusters of four dots is present on all of the drawer fronts and the top. … Continue reading A Chest-On-Stand in the Rocky Hill Collection
Craft
Dressing Table at Sotheby’s
Thanks to Sotheby’s I now have high quality after-treatment images of a dressing table restoration from 1993 that I wrote about in 2015 on this blog. It will be featured in the auction January 19th, 2022, of “Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Peter A. Pfaffenroth: American Furniture, Silver and Decorative Art.” As was the case … Continue reading Dressing Table at Sotheby’s
Brass Handle Reproductions
I was asked in a comment on the previous post where I acquired the brass plates and handles to match the one original surviving escutcheon and the witness marks from the original handles on the dressing table to be sold at Sotheby's in January, 2022. It jogged my memory that I had not written a … Continue reading Brass Handle Reproductions
Dressing Table Resurfaces
I wrote several posts about a 1993 restoration of a dressing table for a client after the table was sold at auction. The posts can be found below. 29 years later it will be sold, again at Sotheby's, New York in January 2022. The dressing table in storage at Sotheby's earlier this year. I haven't … Continue reading Dressing Table Resurfaces
To a “Dott bitt”
The extensive probate inventory of the joiner Charles Plumley (d. 1708, Philadelphia) is well known to furniture historians. A transcription can be found in Benno M. Forman, American Seating Furniture, 1630–1730 [New York: W. W. Norton, 1988], app. 1. He was in the middle of his career when he died and the inventory is a snapshot of a working … Continue reading To a “Dott bitt”
In Proportion to the Trouble 