“1761-1771
Artist/Maker: Shop of William Buckland
Artist/Maker: William Bernard Sears
Origin: America, Virginia, Richmond County
OH: 32″ OW: 45 3/8″ OD: 31 1/4”.
Cherry (by microanalysis), beech (by microanalysis), and marble.
Museum Order
Acc. No. 1993-64
Look: rectangular sideboard table on four projecting, canted legs in the kind of architectural consoles with scrolled toes on blocks the sides of just about every leg are carved with a substantial volute and an prolonged, full blown flower the outward faces of the rear legs are molded the outward faces of the entrance legs are molded and topped with carved acanthus leaves entrance and side rails are trimmed with a substantial gadroon molding at the upper edge and rope molding at the lessen edge the entrance rails centers a substantial shell flanked by voluted acanthus leaves the rectangular marble leading is set in just the rails and bordered by cherry dealing with strips.
Construction: The rails are tenoned into the legs and fastened with large pins. Three medial braces are open up-dovetailed into the entrance and rear rails. The marble slab rests on these braces and fits into rabbets minimize into the entrance and rear rails. Cherry facings are glued and nailed to the tops of the entrance and side rails to enframe the marble. The moldings on the entrance and aspect rails have complex miter joints at the projecting corners and are glued and nailed in spot, as is the utilized shell on the entrance. Each of the authentic foot blocks underneath the rear feet is held in place with 4 huge rosehead nails set into countersunk holes.
Materials: Cherry front rail, facet rails, upper rail facings, applied moldings, applied shell, legs, and foot blocks (by microanalysis) beech rear rail and medial braces (by microanalysis) marble prime.
Mark(s): None.
Inscription(s): None.
Label:
William Buckland (1734-1774), an English-experienced builder lively in eastern Virginia and Maryland all through the third quarter of the eighteenth century, was liable for some of the colonial Chesapeake’s most aspiring architectural productions and cupboard wares. Amongst the latter is this cherry sideboard desk designed during the 1760s for the Tayloe family members of Mount Ethereal in Richmond County, Virginia. With its totally carved console legs, gadrooned rails, and marble major, this remarkably well-preserved item illustrates each Buckland’s significant creative vision and the skill of his staff. It also alludes to Buckland’s penchant for aesthetically built-in architectural strategies.
Born in Oxfordshire, Buckland was apprenticed in 1748 to his uncle, London joiner James Buckland. The younger artisan completed his schooling in 1755 and shortly signed an indenture with Virginian Thomson Mason. In return for passage to The united states and a modest yearly salary, Buckland would provide Mason or his agent for four a long time “in the Employment of a Carpenter &. Joiner.” In point, Mason experienced secured Buckland’s solutions on behalf of his more mature brother, George (1725-1792), a growing Fairfax County planter and politician. Then in the midst of constructing Gunston Hall, a brick property on the Potomac River, the elder Mason necessary the companies of a competent carver and joiner. Like countless numbers of other British artisans, Buckland unquestionably approved the indenture hoping to come across much better job options in the colonies.
When Buckland arrived in Virginia, the masonry shell of Gunston Corridor was apparently full and ready for its joined factors. Buckland and his crew designed and executed woodwork that was surprisingly elaborate and uncommon for its time and put. They added a porch in the variety of an engaged octagon carefully resembling a Gothic yard temple in William Pain’s BUILDER’S COMPANION AND WORKMAN’S Normal ASSISTAN (1758). This whimsical portico with Gothic arches and a now lacking decorative finial has no recognised parallels in contemporary American operate. Buckland designed equally appealing areas within the property, together with a templelike central passage with a well known Doric entablature supported by twelve fluted pilasters. In the parlor, the artisans set up woodwork that blends classical and naturalistic carved ornament with Palladian symmetry. The dining home was executed in the exotic Chinese flavor, finish with pagodalike moldings on door and window surrounds. One can only envision the surprised reactions of Mason’s friends on their 1st check out of his singular new dwelling.
Buckland’s do the job at Gunston Hall was almost full by 1759 when Mason endorsed the back again of the Englishman’s indenture with a extremely complimentary suggestion, contacting him “a entire Learn of the Carpenter’s &. Joiners Company both of those in Idea &. Practice.” Two years later, the artisan moved his crew to Richmond County on the decrease Rappahannock River the place he evidently was commissioned to finish the interior woodwork of Mount Ethereal, the “sophisticated Seat” of John (1721-1779) and Rebecca Plater Tayloe.
Crafted of dressed stone, Mount Airy nonetheless stands on a hill overlooking the river sadly, most of its initial inside woodwork was dropped in a fire in 1844. Surviving cornice fragments go away no question that the joined work was made and carved by the exact same arms that generated the exuberant woodwork at Gunston Corridor. These richly embellished fragments also hint at the character of Buckland’s fittings. Tutor Philip Fithian was amazed by a go to to Mount Ethereal in 1774 and took the time to history his observations. He noted that the home had been “completed curiously,” possibly alluding to fanciful woodwork like that in the Palladian and Chinese rooms at Gunston Corridor.
Owning put in a 10 years in Richmond County, Buckland and some of his personnel moved in 1771 to Annapolis, Maryland, where they have been commissioned to total the interior of a household begun by Samuel Chase. Now styling himself an architect, Buckland afterwards labored on a number of other initiatives in Maryland like the remarkably regarded exterior of the Hammond-Harwood home, also in Annapolis. Buckland died all of a sudden in 1774 at the age of 30-nine.
Despite the fact that none of Buckland’s interiors endure with their initial furnishings intact, there is evidence that he adopted the lead of British baroque architects like William Kent (1684-1748) in coming up with home furniture whose ornament was coordinated with the architectural areas for which it was intended. The initially sign of that follow is from Gunston Hall. Amongst the couple of surviving pieces of Mason home furnishings is a fragmentary facet chair, part of a bigger set manufactured by the Buckland store. Based mostly on a Chinese-encouraged design and style in the initial and next editions of Chippendale’s Director, the Mason chair and its mates need to have been supposed for use in the Chinese dining area there.
Identical proof survives from Mount Airy where by most of the ground flooring furnishings were being saved from the fire, among them this outstanding sideboard table and one more remarkable case in point, both evidently produced in the Buckland store. In terms of its ambition and execution, every is strongly reminiscent of the woodwork at Gunston Corridor. For instance, the carved console legs on the CWF table have wide-leafed bellflowers intertwined with well known volutes that are centered by carved rosettes. The volutes extend down the sides of the legs to kind raised borders that terminate in voluted ft with matching rosettes. This ornament carefully follows that on the corbelled keystones that surmount the crafted-in bowfats in the Palladian parlor at Gunston Hall. The styles for both equally initiatives ended up probable adapted from plate LII in Abraham Swan, THE BRITISH ARCHITECT (1745), a duplicate of which Buckland owned. The second Mount Airy desk, now at MESDA, is also relevant to the shop’s previously do the job. Dependent on plate XXXVIII in the initial and 2nd editions of Chippendale’s DIRECTOR, it is ornamented with carved rope moldings, an egg-and-dart “cornice,” and an used fretwork of interlocking circles, all of which replicate aspects used by Buckland in the parlor at Gunston Hall.
The parallels concerning the Mount Ethereal tables and the Gunston Hall woodwork are sizeable. As furnishings historian Luke Beckerdite has noticed, “The architectonic form of these tables and their carved aspects counsel that Buckland developed them to enhance the inside woodwork” at Mount Ethereal. Indeed, the egg-and-dart carving on the 2nd table is very very similar to that on the surviving cornice fragments from one of the principal rooms in the Tayloe residence.
Whilst the types for the tables had been almost certainly chosen and adapted by Buckland in his function as learn of the shop, the carving was probable performed by William Bernard Sears (d. 1818), a British-born artisan who also worked with Buckland at Gunston Corridor. Simply because of its idiosyncrasies, Sears’s carving is effortlessly distinguished from that of other artisans. For illustration, Sears’s foliage was carved with strange, lancet-formed eyes, and he usually utilized pairs of brief, parallel flutes to propose shading on flat surfaces. Sears’s do the job normally was attained with quite a few more cuts than vital, suggesting that he was relatively unsure of his route. The overall economy of movement involved with much more sophisticated city carving is missing.
The uncommon character of Sears’s model implies that he may perhaps not have accomplished his coaching before coming to America. It is probable that Sears’s exclusive technique reflects his skills as a carver-gilder. Sears’s affiliation with that trade is documented by a commission he obtained in 1772 just after leaving Buckland’s employment to carve and gild the woodwork for Pohick Church in Fairfax County. The ornate inside, which was ruined by Union troops all through the Civil War, integrated gilt ornaments set within just massive tabernacle frames and a palm department with corresponding material for a pulpit that was surmounted by a carved and gilded dove. Lots of gilt artifacts show expediency in their carved ornamentation, and Sears’s free fashion may perhaps reflect this different solution.
Whilst Buckland made the architectural fittings and furniture and Sears carved them, much of the actual assembly was probably carried out by the shop’s home joiners, who seemed to have been unfamiliar with standard cabinetmaking methods. That observation is borne out by all of the home furniture attributed to Buckland, such as the CWF desk, which was constructed with coarse thick leg stock of the sizing normally used for joists and studs. The mortise-and-tenon joints at the legs and rails are crudely reduce and secured with wood pins far bigger than ordinary, while the a few medial braces are established into about sawn angled mortises. The rail moldings and central shell are not only glued in place but also secured with exposed finishing nails that would have been very obvious when new. The deep rabbets that assistance the marble major ended up lower into the frame immediately after assembly, so invading and to some extent compromising the joinery, when the blocks nailed to the bottoms of the foot plinths are evidently an afterthought applied to right the height of the desk.
Distinguished by quite a few stylistic and structural idiosyncrasies, Buckland’s furniture and architectural interiors are important reminders of the large diploma of interaction concerning artisans all through the colonial time period. The CWF table is an example of how the skills of designer, carver, and joiner mixed to develop a sort intended to interact aesthetically with its architectural placing. The intensive carving and outstanding baroque styling surely stand for a regional exception to the prevailing neat and plain style. On the other hand, the cultural ties to Fantastic Britain seen in the design and style and development of the desk by immigrant labor replicate the widespread Chesapeake sample.
Provenance:
The desk was built for John (1721-1779) and Rebecca Plater Tayloe of Mount Ethereal 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 spouse, 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.”
From: emuseum.background.org/code/emuseum.asp?action=newpage&c…
Posted by Christine G. H. Franck on 2012-01-23 01:22:47
Tagged: , Dewitt Wallace Ornamental Arts Museum
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