“Sideboard table
1761-1771
Artist/Maker: Shop of William Buckland
Artist/Maker: William Bernard Sears
Origin: The us, 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
Overall look: rectangular sideboard table 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 significant volute and an extended, complete 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 entrance and aspect rails are trimmed with a significant gadroon molding at the upper edge and rope molding at the decrease edge the front rails facilities a huge shell flanked by voluted acanthus leaves the rectangular marble major is set inside the rails and bordered by cherry struggling with strips.
Building: The rails are tenoned into the legs and fixed with massive pins. Three medial braces are open-dovetailed into the entrance and rear rails. The marble slab rests on these braces and fits into rabbets minimize into the front and rear rails. Cherry facings are glued and nailed to the tops of the front and side rails to enframe the marble. The moldings on the front and aspect rails have complex miter joints at the projecting corners and are glued and nailed in location, as is the applied shell on the front. Each of the primary foot blocks underneath the rear ft is held in position with 4 large rosehead nails established into countersunk holes.
Components: Cherry entrance rail, side rails, higher rail facings, applied moldings, used shell, legs, and foot blocks (by microanalysis) beech rear rail and medial braces (by microanalysis) marble leading.
Mark(s): None.
Inscription(s): None.
Label:
William Buckland (1734-1774), an English-trained builder lively in jap Virginia and Maryland throughout the third quarter of the eighteenth century, was liable for some of the colonial Chesapeake’s most aspiring architectural productions and cabinet wares. Amongst the latter is this cherry sideboard table made during the 1760s for the Tayloe spouse and children of Mount Airy in Richmond County, Virginia. With its completely carved console legs, gadrooned rails, and marble leading, this remarkably well-preserved object illustrates both Buckland’s considerable creative eyesight and the skill of his staff members. It also alludes to Buckland’s penchant for aesthetically integrated architectural techniques.
Born in Oxfordshire, Buckland was apprenticed in 1748 to his uncle, London joiner James Buckland. The youthful artisan accomplished his coaching in 1755 and soon signed an indenture with Virginian Thomson Mason. In return for passage to America and a modest yearly salary, Buckland would serve Mason or his agent for 4 several years “in the Employment of a Carpenter &. Joiner.” In fact, Mason had secured Buckland’s products and services on behalf of his more mature brother, George (1725-1792), a rising Fairfax County planter and politician. Then in the midst of constructing Gunston Corridor, a brick dwelling on the Potomac River, the elder Mason essential the solutions of a expert carver and joiner. Like thousands of other British artisans, Buckland undoubtedly accepted the indenture hoping to locate greater occupation alternatives in the colonies.
When Buckland arrived in Virginia, the masonry shell of Gunston Corridor was evidently finish and all set for its joined parts. Buckland and his crew intended and executed woodwork that was shockingly elaborate and unusual for its time and area. They included a porch in the variety of an engaged octagon closely resembling a Gothic backyard garden temple in William Pain’s BUILDER’S COMPANION AND WORKMAN’S Standard ASSISTAN (1758). This whimsical portico with Gothic arches and a now missing ornamental finial has no recognised parallels in present-day American do the job. Buckland created similarly exciting spaces inside the house, 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 dining room was executed in the unique Chinese flavor, complete with pagodalike moldings on door and window surrounds. One can only imagine the amazed reactions of Mason’s attendees on their 1st see of his singular new property.
Buckland’s do the job at Gunston Hall was virtually full by 1759 when Mason endorsed the back again of the Englishman’s indenture with a hugely complimentary suggestion, contacting him “a complete Master of the Carpenter’s &. Joiners Small business both in Concept &. Follow.” Two many years later on, the artisan moved his crew to Richmond County on the decrease Rappahannock River where he evidently was commissioned to finish the inside woodwork of Mount Ethereal, the “tasteful Seat” of John (1721-1779) and Rebecca Plater Tayloe.
Crafted of dressed stone, Mount Airy nonetheless stands on a hill overlooking the river unfortunately, most of its primary inside woodwork was shed in a fire in 1844. Surviving cornice fragments depart no question that the joined get the job done was developed and carved by the identical arms that made the exuberant woodwork at Gunston Hall. These richly adorned fragments also hint at the character of Buckland’s fittings. Tutor Philip Fithian was impressed by a check out to Mount Ethereal in 1774 and took the time to file his observations. He pointed out that the home experienced been “concluded curiously,” maybe alluding to fanciful woodwork like that in the Palladian and Chinese rooms at Gunston Hall.
Having expended a 10 years in Richmond County, Buckland and some of his workers moved in 1771 to Annapolis, Maryland, wherever they had been commissioned to full the interior of a residence begun by Samuel Chase. Now styling himself an architect, Buckland later labored on numerous other jobs in Maryland together with the hugely regarded exterior of the Hammond-Harwood dwelling, also in Annapolis. Buckland died quickly in 1774 at the age of thirty-nine.
Even though none of Buckland’s interiors survive with their authentic furnishings intact, there is proof that he followed the direct of British baroque architects like William Kent (1684-1748) in designing furniture whose ornament was coordinated with the architectural areas for which it was meant. The initially sign of that exercise is from Gunston Hall. Amid the handful of surviving pieces of Mason furniture is a fragmentary side chair, aspect of a larger sized set made by the Buckland shop. Dependent on a Chinese-impressed design and style in the very first and 2nd editions of Chippendale’s Director, the Mason chair and its mates have to have been supposed for use in the Chinese dining place there.
Identical evidence survives from Mount Airy where by most of the ground flooring furnishings have been saved from the fire, amongst them this exceptional sideboard desk and yet another remarkable case in point, each evidently produced in the Buckland shop. In conditions of its ambition and execution, every is strongly reminiscent of the woodwork at Gunston Hall. For instance, the carved console legs on the CWF table have wide-leafed bellflowers intertwined with distinguished volutes that are centered by carved rosettes. The volutes extend down the sides of the legs to sort raised borders that terminate in voluted feet with matching rosettes. This ornament carefully follows that on the corbelled keystones that surmount the crafted-in bowfats in the Palladian parlor at Gunston Corridor. The patterns for both equally projects ended up most likely tailored from plate LII in Abraham Swan, THE BRITISH ARCHITECT (1745), a copy of which Buckland owned. The next Mount Airy desk, now at MESDA, is also connected to the shop’s before function. Based mostly on plate XXXVIII in the to start with and 2nd 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 duplicate aspects utilized by Buckland in the parlor at Gunston Corridor.
The parallels among the Mount Ethereal tables and the Gunston Hall woodwork are major. As household furniture historian Luke Beckerdite has noticed, “The architectonic form of these tables and their carved aspects propose that Buckland built them to enhance the interior woodwork” at Mount Airy. Indeed, the egg-and-dart carving on the 2nd table is really similar to that on the surviving cornice fragments from a single of the principal rooms in the Tayloe residence.
Though the models for the tables had been almost certainly selected and adapted by Buckland in his part as learn of the store, the carving was probable carried out by William Bernard Sears (d. 1818), a British-born artisan who also labored with Buckland at Gunston Hall. Since of its idiosyncrasies, Sears’s carving is effortlessly distinguished from that of other artisans. For example, Sears’s foliage was carved with strange, lancet-formed eyes, and he frequently applied pairs of small, parallel flutes to propose shading on flat surfaces. Sears’s perform typically was attained with numerous much more cuts than needed, suggesting that he was somewhat unsure of his way. The overall economy of movement associated with much more subtle city carving is missing.
The uncommon nature of Sears’s model indicates that he may perhaps not have concluded his teaching ahead of coming to The united states. It is achievable that Sears’s unique approach demonstrates his skills as a carver-gilder. Sears’s association with that trade is documented by a fee he obtained in 1772 soon after leaving Buckland’s employment to carve and gild the woodwork for Pohick Church in Fairfax County. The ornate interior, which was ruined by Union troops through the Civil War, included gilt ornaments established inside of big 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 display screen expediency in their carved ornamentation, and Sears’s unfastened design and style could replicate this unique strategy.
Though Buckland designed the architectural fittings and home furnishings and Sears carved them, substantially of the genuine assembly was most likely accomplished by the shop’s dwelling joiners, who seemed to have been unfamiliar with common cabinetmaking tactics. That observation is borne out by all of the home furniture attributed to Buckland, which include the CWF desk, which was constructed with coarse thick leg stock of the dimensions usually utilized for joists and studs. The mortise-and-tenon joints at the legs and rails are crudely reduce and secured with picket pins considerably bigger than usual, when the a few medial braces are established into approximately sawn angled mortises. The rail moldings and central shell are not only glued in spot but also secured with exposed finishing nails that would have been quite noticeable when new. The deep rabbets that aid the marble top rated have been lower into the body after assembly, therefore invading and to some extent compromising the joinery, when the blocks nailed to the bottoms of the foot plinths are obviously an afterthought applied to correct the height of the desk.
Distinguished by lots of stylistic and structural idiosyncrasies, Buckland’s furniture and architectural interiors are important reminders of the substantial degree of conversation concerning artisans for the duration of the colonial interval. The CWF table is an case in point of how the talents of designer, carver, and joiner combined to create a variety meant to interact aesthetically with its architectural placing. The substantial carving and distinguished baroque styling unquestionably symbolize a regional exception to the prevailing neat and plain flavor. On the other hand, the cultural ties to Good Britain viewed in the design and development of the desk by immigrant labor replicate the widespread Chesapeake sample.
Provenance:
The desk was designed 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 spouse, Ann Ogle to their son, William Henry Tayloe (1799-1871), and his spouse, 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 wife, Polly Montague Tayloe, from whom it was acquired 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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