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Photo: Courtesy The Chipstone Foundation, Fox Point, Wis., 1958.20; photo by Gavin Ashworth
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Dressing table

Object number

RIF225

Maker

Maker Unknown

Dimensions

33 1/4 x 35 1/8 x 20 1/2 in. (84.455 x 89.218 x 52.07 cm)

Date

ca. 1958

Current location

The Chipstone Foundation

Geography

Made in Newport, Rhode Island
(view a map of Rhode Island)

Medium

Mahogany (primary); chestnut (backboard, backing for drawer dividers, and some drawer linings); yellow poplar (some drawer linings)

Style

Chippendale

Provenance

John S. Walton, New York; sold to Polly Mariner Stone (1898–1995) and Stanley Stone (1896–1987), Fox Point, Wisconsin, 1958; bequeathed by him to The Chipstone Foundation, Fox Point, 1987

Associated names

Polly Mariner Stone
Stanley Stone
John S. Walton

Construction

The construction of this dressing table is generally the same as that of no. 17 (1978.1). The following variations are noted: the blocks securing the extensions of the legs in the interior are designed so that the legs are easily removable; each side board is reduced in thickness at each end where the leg extension rests against it (this construction permits the legs to be held in place against the sides); the horizontal supports of the small drawers are nailed to rabbets in the skirtboard, not dovetailed; the case back is made of two boards of chestnut; the top drawer has poplar sides and back, is dovetailed front and back, and has a chestnut bottom fitted to a groove in the front and nailed to the sides and back; in the smaller drawers the woods are the same but the bottom is nailed to the front as well as to the sides and back. Source: Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque, American Furniture at Chipstone, (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 40.

Notes

The age of this dressing table has been questioned, see Beckerdite and Miller 2002, pp. 83–87.

Bibliography

Stanley Stone, "Rhode Island Furniture at Chipstone, Part II," Antiques 91, no. 4 (April 1967): 508, ill.
Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque, American Furniture at Chipstone (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 40–41, no. 18, ill.
Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque, "Living with Antiques: Chipstone near Milwaukee," Antiques 133, no. 5 (May 1988): 1155, pl. XIX.
Luke Beckerdite and Alan Miller, "Furniture Fakes from the Chipstone Collection," American Furniture, 2002 (2002): 83–87, fig. 62–67.
Ralph E. Carpenter, Jr., "Quaker Baroque: How Political and Religious Freedom Inspired a Dynasty of American Cabinet-Makers," Christie's Magazine (May–June 2002): 111, ill.