“Sideboard table
1761-1771
Artist/Maker: Store of William Buckland
Artist/Maker: William Bernard Sears
Origin: The united states, Virginia, Richmond County
OH: 32″ OW: 45 3/8″ OD: 31 1/4”.
Cherry (by microanalysis), beech (by microanalysis), and marble.
Museum Buy
Acc. No. 1993-64
Appearance: rectangular sideboard desk on 4 projecting, canted legs in the form of architectural consoles with scrolled feet on blocks the sides of just about every leg are carved with a big volute and an prolonged, whole blown flower the outward faces of the rear legs are molded the outward faces of the front legs are molded and topped with carved acanthus leaves front and side rails are trimmed with a huge gadroon molding at the higher edge and rope molding at the reduce edge the entrance rails facilities a huge shell flanked by voluted acanthus leaves the rectangular marble top rated is established inside the rails and bordered by cherry dealing with strips.
Development: The rails are tenoned into the legs and fastened with big pins. 3 medial braces are open-dovetailed into the front and rear rails. The marble slab rests on these braces and matches into rabbets lower into the front and rear rails. Cherry facings are glued and nailed to the tops of the entrance and facet rails to enframe the marble. The moldings on the front and aspect rails have sophisticated miter joints at the projecting corners and are glued and nailed in spot, as is the applied shell on the entrance. Each and every of the authentic foot blocks beneath the rear feet is held in put with 4 huge rosehead nails set into countersunk holes.
Elements: Cherry front rail, side rails, upper rail facings, used moldings, utilized shell, legs, and foot blocks (by microanalysis) beech rear rail and medial braces (by microanalysis) marble top.
Mark(s): None.
Inscription(s): None.
Label:
William Buckland (1734-1774), an English-skilled builder active in eastern Virginia and Maryland in the course of the 3rd quarter of the eighteenth century, was responsible for some of the colonial Chesapeake’s most aspiring architectural productions and cupboard wares. Between the latter is this cherry sideboard table made for the duration of the 1760s for the Tayloe loved ones of Mount Airy in Richmond County, Virginia. With its completely carved console legs, gadrooned rails, and marble leading, this remarkably effectively-preserved item illustrates both of those Buckland’s significant creative vision and the talent of his staff members. It also alludes to Buckland’s penchant for aesthetically integrated architectural strategies.
Born in Oxfordshire, Buckland was apprenticed in 1748 to his uncle, London joiner James Buckland. The younger artisan accomplished his coaching in 1755 and soon signed an indenture with Virginian Thomson Mason. In return for passage to The usa and a modest annual wage, Buckland would provide Mason or his agent for 4 decades “in the Employment of a Carpenter &. Joiner.” In simple fact, Mason had secured Buckland’s providers on behalf of his older brother, George (1725-1792), a soaring Fairfax County planter and politician. Then in the midst of creating Gunston Corridor, a brick dwelling on the Potomac River, the elder Mason demanded the companies of a proficient carver and joiner. Like thousands of other British artisans, Buckland undoubtedly approved the indenture hoping to come across much better job prospects in the colonies.
When Buckland arrived in Virginia, the masonry shell of Gunston Corridor was apparently full and completely ready for its joined components. Buckland and his crew created and executed woodwork that was astonishingly elaborate and unusual for its time and location. They included a porch in the type of an engaged octagon closely resembling a Gothic back garden temple in William Pain’s BUILDER’S COMPANION AND WORKMAN’S Basic ASSISTAN (1758). This whimsical portico with Gothic arches and a now missing decorative finial has no recognised parallels in contemporary American work. Buckland produced similarly appealing spaces inside of the dwelling, which include a templelike central passage with a notable Doric entablature supported by twelve fluted pilasters. In the parlor, the artisans installed woodwork that blends classical and naturalistic carved ornament with Palladian symmetry. The eating area was executed in the unique Chinese taste, comprehensive with pagodalike moldings on door and window surrounds. 1 can only picture the amazed reactions of Mason’s friends on their very first look at of his singular new dwelling.
Buckland’s get the job done at Gunston Corridor was nearly entire by 1759 when Mason endorsed the back again of the Englishman’s indenture with a extremely complimentary suggestion, contacting him “a comprehensive Master of the Carpenter’s &. Joiners Organization both of those in Idea &. Practice.” Two several years later on, the artisan moved his crew to Richmond County on the lessen Rappahannock River where by he evidently was commissioned to full the inside woodwork of Mount Airy, the “exquisite Seat” of John (1721-1779) and Rebecca Plater Tayloe.
Built of dressed stone, Mount Airy however stands on a hill overlooking the river unfortunately, most of its first inside woodwork was misplaced in a hearth in 1844. Surviving cornice fragments leave no doubt that the joined do the job was made and carved by the very same palms that made the exuberant woodwork at Gunston Hall. These richly embellished fragments also trace at the character of Buckland’s fittings. Tutor Philip Fithian was amazed by a visit to Mount Airy in 1774 and took the time to record his observations. He famous that the dwelling had been “concluded curiously,” perhaps alluding to fanciful woodwork like that in the Palladian and Chinese rooms at Gunston Corridor.
Having put in a 10 years in Richmond County, Buckland and some of his personnel moved in 1771 to Annapolis, Maryland, in which they have been commissioned to finish the interior of a home started by Samuel Chase. Now styling himself an architect, Buckland later labored on quite a few other assignments in Maryland which include the hugely regarded exterior of the Hammond-Harwood property, also in Annapolis. Buckland died quickly in 1774 at the age of thirty-9.
Though none of Buckland’s interiors survive with their first furnishings intact, there is evidence that he followed the direct of British baroque architects like William Kent (1684-1748) in planning household furniture whose ornament was coordinated with the architectural areas for which it was intended. The initially sign of that apply is from Gunston Hall. Among the the number of surviving parts of Mason home furniture is a fragmentary aspect chair, element of a more substantial set created by the Buckland shop. Based on a Chinese-inspired style in the initial and 2nd editions of Chippendale’s Director, the Mason chair and its mates must have been intended for use in the Chinese eating space there.
Related proof survives from Mount Ethereal where most of the floor flooring furnishings had been saved from the fire, amongst them this extraordinary sideboard table and another fantastic example, both plainly built in the Buckland store. In phrases of its ambition and execution, each and every is strongly reminiscent of the woodwork at Gunston Hall. For occasion, the carved console legs on the CWF desk have wide-leafed bellflowers intertwined with distinguished volutes that are centered by carved rosettes. The volutes increase down the sides of the legs to variety elevated borders that terminate in voluted feet with matching rosettes. This ornament carefully follows that on the corbelled keystones that surmount the designed-in bowfats in the Palladian parlor at Gunston Hall. The styles for each jobs had been possible tailored from plate LII in Abraham Swan, THE BRITISH ARCHITECT (1745), a copy of which Buckland owned. The next Mount Ethereal desk, now at MESDA, is also similar to the shop’s previously get the job done. Based on plate XXXVIII in the 1st and next editions of Chippendale’s DIRECTOR, it is ornamented with carved rope moldings, an egg-and-dart “cornice,” and an applied fretwork of interlocking circles, all of which replicate features employed by Buckland in the parlor at Gunston Corridor.
The parallels involving the Mount Ethereal tables and the Gunston Corridor woodwork are sizeable. As home furnishings historian Luke Beckerdite has observed, “The architectonic type of these tables and their carved particulars suggest that Buckland intended them to complement the inside woodwork” at Mount Airy. In truth, the egg-and-dart carving on the 2nd desk is pretty similar to that on the surviving cornice fragments from one of the principal rooms in the Tayloe home.
When the types for the tables ended up almost surely picked and tailored by Buckland in his position as grasp of the store, the carving was most likely carried out by William Bernard Sears (d. 1818), a British-born artisan who also worked with Buckland at Gunston Hall. Due to the fact of its idiosyncrasies, Sears’s carving is easily distinguished from that of other artisans. For illustration, Sears’s foliage was carved with strange, lancet-shaped eyes, and he generally utilised pairs of limited, parallel flutes to suggest shading on flat surfaces. Sears’s perform normally was achieved with several a lot more cuts than needed, suggesting that he was to some degree unsure of his route. The overall economy of motion involved with far more subtle city carving is missing.
The strange character of Sears’s design implies that he may well not have done his education just before coming to The united states. It is achievable that Sears’s exclusive tactic demonstrates his techniques as a carver-gilder. Sears’s association with that trade is documented by a fee he gained in 1772 soon after leaving Buckland’s work to carve and gild the woodwork for Pohick Church in Fairfax County. The ornate interior, which was destroyed by Union troops during the Civil War, included gilt ornaments set in significant tabernacle frames and a palm branch with corresponding material for a pulpit that was surmounted by a carved and gilded dove. Quite a few gilt artifacts exhibit expediency in their carved ornamentation, and Sears’s unfastened model might replicate this unique solution.
Though Buckland developed the architectural fittings and furnishings and Sears carved them, much of the true assembly was almost certainly accomplished by the shop’s residence joiners, who seemed to have been unfamiliar with typical cabinetmaking methods. That observation is borne out by all of the household furniture attributed to Buckland, which include the CWF table, which was built with coarse thick leg inventory of the sizing usually used for joists and studs. The mortise-and-tenon joints at the legs and rails are crudely minimize and secured with wooden pins far much larger than standard, although the three medial braces are set into roughly sawn angled mortises. The rail moldings and central shell are not only glued in spot but also secured with exposed ending nails that would have been pretty clear when new. The deep rabbets that assist the marble best were being slash into the frame after assembly, consequently invading and to some extent compromising the joinery, while the blocks nailed to the bottoms of the foot plinths are evidently an afterthought utilized to right the height of the desk.
Distinguished by numerous stylistic and structural idiosyncrasies, Buckland’s household furniture and architectural interiors are important reminders of the higher degree of interaction concerning artisans through the colonial interval. The CWF desk is an case in point of how the abilities of designer, carver, and joiner mixed to create a kind intended to interact aesthetically with its architectural location. The substantial carving and popular baroque styling unquestionably characterize a regional exception to the prevailing neat and basic flavor. On the other hand, the cultural ties to Great Britain observed in the design and style and building of the desk by immigrant labor replicate the widespread Chesapeake pattern.
Provenance:
The table was manufactured for John (1721-1779) and Rebecca Plater Tayloe of Mount Airy plantation in Richmond Co., Va. It descended to their son, John Tayloe III (1771-1828), and his wife, Ann Ogle to their son, William Henry Tayloe (1799-1871), and his wife, Henrietta Ogle to their son, Henry Augustine Tayloe (1836-1908), and his spouse, Courtenay Norton Chinn to their son, Henry Gwynne Tayloe (1874-1961), and his wife, Grace Lemmon to their son, Henry Gwynne Tayloe, Jr. (1912-1988) and to his spouse, Polly Montague Tayloe, from whom it was obtained by CWF in 1993.”
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Posted by Christine G. H. Franck on 2012-01-23 01:21:56
Tagged: , Dewitt Wallace Ornamental Arts Museum
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