{"product_id":"antique-ebonized-colonial-revival-dresser-five-drawers-c-1915-1930","title":"Antique Ebonized Colonial Revival Dresser, Five Drawers, c. 1915–1930","description":"\u003ch3\u003eThe Piece\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA low chest of five drawers, three short across the top over two long, standing on turned and tapered legs that spring from carved rosette blocks at the corners. The case stiles are canted and reeded, the drawer fronts are outlined in a fine carved rope moulding, and the centre of the upper long drawer carries a shaped applied cartouche in place of a keyhole escutcheon. Brass ring pulls hang from rosette backplates on the long drawers; the three short drawers take small rosette knobs.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe whole case is finished in black. It is worn the way a painted piece earns rather than the way one is distressed to order: through to pale timber along the top moulding where hands and objects have passed, on the crest of each leg turning, and along the base rail at floor level. The top has been polished by use to a soft sheen. Inside, the drawers are bare warm timber, clean and dry, and one of the short drawers retains its fitted divider, the compartmented tray meant for collars, studs and jewellery.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003eHistory \u0026amp; Provenance\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is American Colonial Revival bedroom furniture, the vocabulary the big case goods factories worked in from the middle of the 1910s through the 1920s: Sheraton legs, reeded corners, restrained applied carving, and hardware in the federal taste. It would have been made as part of a suite, the dresser paired with a bed, a chiffonier and a vanity, and it would originally have carried a swing mirror on posts. It is offered here as the case alone, which is how most of them are used now.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe construction places it. The drawers run on wooden side guides, the bottoms are the wide laminated panels that became the American factory standard after about 1910, and every joint is machine cut, which rules out the hand work of the previous century. The turned leg over a carved rosette block is the detail that closes the window at the other end: by the early 1930s the American trade had moved to the rounded waterfall forms of the Art Deco years, and this design vocabulary had gone.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe black is not original. Beneath the wear the timber shows light, and the finish sits over the carved mouldings rather than under them. Ebonizing a piece like this is an old and honest practice, and in this case it is the making of the object: it turns a common brown dresser into something that reads as architecture.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003eProduct Details\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003ctable\u003e\n  \u003ctbody\u003e\n    \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eEra\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003ec. 1915–1930. The laminated drawer bottoms and wholly machine cut joinery place it after the American factories standardised, around 1910; the Colonial Revival vocabulary of turned legs on carved rosette blocks, reeded canted stiles and federal ring pulls belongs to the later 1910s and the 1920s and had given way to waterfall Art Deco forms by the early 1930s\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n    \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eOrigin\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eAmerican, factory made\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n    \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eForm\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eLow dresser, three short drawers over two long, turned tapered legs on carved rosette blocks, reeded canted stiles, carved rope moulding to the drawer fronts\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n    \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eFinish\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eEbonized, applied later than manufacture, with honest wear through to the timber at the edges, leg turnings and base rail\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n    \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eFittings\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eBrass ring pulls on rosette plates to the long drawers, rosette knobs to the short drawers, one short drawer with its original fitted compartment divider\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n    \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eMarks\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eNo maker's label or stamp found in the drawers or on the case\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n    \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eDimensions\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eApproximately 44 in. wide by 20 in. deep by 34 in. high\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n    \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eCondition\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eGood and structurally sound. Standing true, drawers running freely on their wooden guides, interiors clean and dry with no odour. Paint worn through to timber at the top moulding, the leg turnings and the base rail, and lightly chipped at the top edge. Hardware complete and original to the piece. Offered without a mirror.\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n  \u003c\/tbody\u003e\n\u003c\/table\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003eWhy It Belongs in Your Home\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBlack furniture solves problems that brown furniture creates. It does not have to match anything, it recedes until you want to look at it, and it makes whatever sits on top of it, a lamp, a bowl, a stack of books, read as deliberate. At around waist height and nearly four feet wide this works as a bedroom dresser, but it works just as well in an entry taking keys and post, under a television, or in a dining room as a server. The rope moulding and the reeded corners are what keep it from being a plain box: they catch a raking light and give the black some depth.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Viridian Eclection","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50416911482985,"sku":"VE-1709","price":2100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0651\/0093\/9369\/files\/ve-1709-01.jpg?v=1790368743","url":"https:\/\/viridianeclection.com\/products\/antique-ebonized-colonial-revival-dresser-five-drawers-c-1915-1930","provider":"Viridian Eclection","version":"1.0","type":"link"}