| High chest of drawers | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Year | ca. 1760–1780 |
| Type | Decorative art |
| Dimensions | 250 cm× 109.9 cm× 56.5 cm(98 in× 43.25 in× 22.25 in) |
| Location | Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis |
This high chest of drawers, also known as a highboy or tallboy, is part of the Decorative Arts collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art in Indianapolis, Indiana. Made between 1760 and 1780 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, its design was inspired by British furniture-maker Thomas Chippendale. [1]
Chippendale's rococo style is readily visible in this high chest, with its scroll pediment, flame finials, and shell motifs on the drawers. It is carved from Virginia walnut, with brass mounts. An unusual feature is the unbroken top row of narrow drawers, with the elaborate shell-carved drawer above, rather than centered in the row. This is a more constrained and conservative stylistic choice than many other high chests, hinting at an earlier dating within the period. [2]
In 1754, Chippendale published his hugely influential book of furniture patterns, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director. While quite popular on both sides of the Atlantic, the tensions in the years around the Revolutionary War forced Americans to buy locally. Philadelphia was the largest city in the colonies, and growing rapidly larger thanks to a population boom. Thus, its furniture makers were kept busy crafting pieces such as this, adapting the Chippendale styles demanded by cosmopolitan customers to American tastes and materials. High chests were particularly popular items, used to store clothing and table linens. [1]
The high chest of drawers was a gift of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Indiana to the IMA in 1975. It has the accession number 75.99 and is currently on view in the William L. Fortune Gallery. [3]
Furniture refers to movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating, eating (tables), storing items, eating and/or working with an item, and sleeping. Furniture is also used to hold objects at a convenient height for work, or to store things. Furniture can be a product of design and can be considered a form of decorative art. In addition to furniture's functional role, it can serve a symbolic or religious purpose. It can be made from a vast multitude of materials, including metal, plastic, and wood. Furniture can be made using a variety of woodworking joints which often reflects the local culture.
A commode is any of many pieces of furniture. The Oxford English Dictionary has multiple meanings of "commode". The first relevant definition reads: "A piece of furniture with drawers and shelves; in the bedroom, a sort of elaborate chest of drawers ; in the drawing room, a large kind of chiffonier." The drawing room is itself a term for a formal reception room, and a chiffonier is, in this sense, a small sideboard dating from the early 19th century.
A tallboy is a piece of furniture incorporating a chest of drawers and a wardrobe on top. A highboy consists of double chest of drawers, with the lower section usually wider than the upper. A lowboy is a table-height set of drawers designed to hold a clothes chest, which had been the predominant place one stored clothes for many centuries.
A chest of drawers, also called a dresser or a bureau, is a type of cabinet that has multiple parallel, horizontal drawers generally stacked one above another.
A lowboy is an American collectors term for one type of dressing table. It is a small table with one or two rows of drawers, so called in contradistinction to the tallboy or highboy chest of drawers.
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Thomas Affleck (1740–1795) was an 18th-century American cabinetmaker, who specialized in furniture in the Philadelphia Chippendale style.
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Jonathan Gostelowe was an 18th-century American cabinetmaker, best remembered for his Philadelphia Chippendale-style furniture.
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Louis XIV furniture was massive and lavishly covered with sculpture and ornament of gilded bronze in the earlier part of the personal rule of King Louis XIV of France (1660–1690). After about 1690, thanks in large part to the furniture designer André Charles Boulle, a more original and delicate style appeared, sometimes known as Boulle work. It was based on the use of marquetry, the inlay of piece of ebony and other rare woods, a technique first used in Florence in the 15th century, which was refined and developed by Boulle and others working for the King. Furniture was inlaid with thin plaques of ebony, copper, mother of pearl, and exotic woods of different colors in elaborate designs.