“Sideboard desk
1761-1771
Artist/Maker: Store 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 Order
Acc. No. 1993-64
Look: rectangular sideboard desk on four projecting, canted legs in the form of architectural consoles with scrolled toes on blocks the sides of just about every leg are carved with a substantial volute and an prolonged, entire 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 front and aspect rails are trimmed with a large gadroon molding at the higher edge and rope molding at the lessen edge the entrance rails facilities a huge shell flanked by voluted acanthus leaves the rectangular marble best is set within just the rails and bordered by cherry going through strips.
Development: 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 suits into rabbets cut 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 facet rails have complicated miter joints at the projecting corners and are glued and nailed in put, as is the applied shell on the front. Every of the authentic foot blocks less than the rear toes is held in place with 4 huge rosehead nails established into countersunk holes.
Elements: Cherry entrance rail, facet rails, higher rail facings, used 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-educated builder active in eastern Virginia and Maryland throughout the 3rd quarter of the eighteenth century, was dependable for some of the colonial Chesapeake’s most aspiring architectural productions and cupboard wares. Among the latter is this cherry sideboard desk created in the course of the 1760s for the Tayloe family members of Mount Airy in Richmond County, Virginia. With its entirely carved console legs, gadrooned rails, and marble major, this remarkably perfectly-preserved object illustrates both Buckland’s considerable inventive vision and the skill of his workforce. It also alludes to Buckland’s penchant for aesthetically built-in architectural schemes.
Born in Oxfordshire, Buckland was apprenticed in 1748 to his uncle, London joiner James Buckland. The younger artisan finished his teaching in 1755 and quickly signed an indenture with Virginian Thomson Mason. In return for passage to The united states and a modest annual wage, Buckland would provide Mason or his agent for 4 many years “in the Employment of a Carpenter &. Joiner.” In fact, Mason experienced secured Buckland’s services on behalf of his older brother, George (1725-1792), a mounting Fairfax County planter and politician. Then in the midst of setting up Gunston Hall, a brick home on the Potomac River, the elder Mason necessary the products and services of a expert carver and joiner. Like countless numbers of other British artisans, Buckland without doubt accepted the indenture hoping to locate greater occupation possibilities in the colonies.
When Buckland arrived in Virginia, the masonry shell of Gunston Hall was seemingly finish and prepared for its joined parts. Buckland and his crew developed and executed woodwork that was astonishingly elaborate and unusual for its time and place. They included a porch in the type of an engaged octagon intently resembling a Gothic back garden temple in William Pain’s BUILDER’S COMPANION AND WORKMAN’S Common ASSISTAN (1758). This whimsical portico with Gothic arches and a now missing ornamental finial has no recognised parallels in up to date American get the job done. Buckland made equally appealing areas within the residence, which include a templelike central passage with a popular 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 space was executed in the exotic Chinese taste, complete with pagodalike moldings on door and window surrounds. One can only consider the shocked reactions of Mason’s attendees on their initially watch of his singular new home.
Buckland’s operate at Gunston Hall was almost complete by 1759 when Mason endorsed the back of the Englishman’s indenture with a very complimentary suggestion, contacting him “a full Learn of the Carpenter’s &. Joiners Company equally in Idea &. Observe.” Two several years later, the artisan moved his crew to Richmond County on the decrease Rappahannock River where by he evidently was commissioned to total the interior woodwork of Mount Airy, the “classy Seat” of John (1721-1779) and Rebecca Plater Tayloe.
Created of dressed stone, Mount Airy however stands on a hill overlooking the river unfortunately, most of its authentic inside woodwork was shed in a fire in 1844. Surviving cornice fragments depart no doubt that the joined do the job was intended and carved by the exact hands that manufactured 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 stop by to Mount Airy in 1774 and took the time to history his observations. He observed that the property experienced been “concluded curiously,” most likely alluding to fanciful woodwork like that in the Palladian and Chinese rooms at Gunston Hall.
Getting put in a ten years in Richmond County, Buckland and some of his workers moved in 1771 to Annapolis, Maryland, in which they have been commissioned to complete the inside of a residence begun by Samuel Chase. Now styling himself an architect, Buckland later on worked on numerous other jobs in Maryland including the really regarded exterior of the Hammond-Harwood household, also in Annapolis. Buckland died instantly in 1774 at the age of thirty-nine.
Despite the fact that none of Buckland’s interiors endure with their primary furnishings intact, there is proof that he adopted the lead of British baroque architects like William Kent (1684-1748) in planning furniture whose ornament was coordinated with the architectural spaces for which it was meant. The initial indicator of that practice is from Gunston Corridor. Among the couple of surviving items of Mason home furniture is a fragmentary aspect chair, aspect of a greater set developed by the Buckland shop. Based mostly on a Chinese-encouraged structure in the initial and second editions of Chippendale’s Director, the Mason chair and its mates have to have been intended for use in the Chinese eating home there.
Comparable evidence survives from Mount Ethereal the place most of the floor ground furnishings ended up saved from the hearth, amid them this exceptional sideboard desk and one more exceptional case in point, the two plainly made in the Buckland shop. In terms of its ambition and execution, each is strongly reminiscent of the woodwork at Gunston Hall. For instance, the carved console legs on the CWF table have broad-leafed bellflowers intertwined with popular volutes that are centered by carved rosettes. The volutes lengthen down the sides of the legs to form raised borders that terminate in voluted ft with matching rosettes. This ornament closely follows that on the corbelled keystones that surmount the crafted-in bowfats in the Palladian parlor at Gunston Corridor. The types for both equally initiatives were very likely adapted from plate LII in Abraham Swan, THE BRITISH ARCHITECT (1745), a copy of which Buckland owned. The 2nd Mount Ethereal desk, now at MESDA, is also connected to the shop’s previously work. Based mostly on plate XXXVIII in the first and next editions of Chippendale’s DIRECTOR, it is ornamented with carved rope moldings, an egg-and-dart “cornice,” and an utilized fretwork of interlocking circles, all of which duplicate aspects made use of by Buckland in the parlor at Gunston Hall.
The parallels between the Mount Airy tables and the Gunston Hall woodwork are sizeable. As furniture historian Luke Beckerdite has noticed, “The architectonic variety of these tables and their carved particulars counsel that Buckland developed them to complement the inside woodwork” at Mount Ethereal. In fact, the egg-and-dart carving on the 2nd table is extremely identical to that on the surviving cornice fragments from one of the principal rooms in the Tayloe home.
Whilst the models for the tables ended up practically definitely selected and tailored by Buckland in his purpose as learn of the store, the carving was probable completed by William Bernard Sears (d. 1818), a British-born artisan who also worked with Buckland at Gunston Corridor. Because of its idiosyncrasies, Sears’s carving is quickly distinguished from that of other artisans. For case in point, Sears’s foliage was carved with uncommon, lancet-formed eyes, and he typically made use of pairs of quick, parallel flutes to counsel shading on flat surfaces. Sears’s do the job usually was achieved with lots of much more cuts than vital, suggesting that he was somewhat uncertain of his course. The economic system of motion involved with a lot more advanced city carving is missing.
The abnormal nature of Sears’s model implies that he could not have concluded his coaching prior to coming to The us. It is attainable that Sears’s exclusive solution demonstrates his skills as a carver-gilder. Sears’s affiliation with that trade is documented by a fee he obtained in 1772 immediately after leaving Buckland’s employment to carve and gild the woodwork for Pohick Church in Fairfax County. The ornate inside, which was wrecked by Union troops through the Civil War, provided gilt ornaments set within just huge tabernacle frames and a palm branch with corresponding drapery for a pulpit that was surmounted by a carved and gilded dove. Quite a few gilt artifacts screen expediency in their carved ornamentation, and Sears’s free type may reflect this distinct method.
Although Buckland built the architectural fittings and furniture and Sears carved them, significantly of the real assembly was most likely performed by the shop’s residence joiners, who seemed to have been unfamiliar with regular cabinetmaking procedures. That observation is borne out by all of the household furniture attributed to Buckland, such as the CWF table, which was built with coarse thick leg stock of the measurement frequently employed for joists and studs. The mortise-and-tenon joints at the legs and rails are crudely slash and secured with wood pins considerably greater than normal, although the three medial braces are set into about sawn angled mortises. The rail moldings and central shell are not only glued in put but also secured with exposed ending nails that would have been very clear when new. The deep rabbets that assist the marble top rated were slice into the frame following assembly, therefore invading and to some extent compromising the joinery, when the blocks nailed to the bottoms of the foot plinths are plainly an afterthought applied to accurate the height of the table.
Distinguished by quite a few stylistic and structural idiosyncrasies, Buckland’s furnishings and architectural interiors are precious reminders of the superior diploma of interaction among artisans throughout the colonial period. The CWF desk is an instance of how the talents of designer, carver, and joiner blended to generate a variety intended to interact aesthetically with its architectural location. The considerable carving and distinguished baroque styling surely represent a regional exception to the prevailing neat and plain flavor. On the other hand, the cultural ties to Good Britain witnessed in the design and style and development of the table by immigrant labor reflect the widespread Chesapeake sample.
Provenance:
The table was created 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 wife, 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.”
From: emuseum.background.org/code/emuseum.asp?motion=newpage&c…
Posted by Christine G. H. Franck on 2012-01-23 01:24:16
Tagged: , Dewitt Wallace Attractive Arts Museum
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