Carved Quartersawn Oak Chiffonier, Pillar Mirror, c. 1895–1910

The Piece

An American chiffonier in quartersawn oak with a pillar mirror, the tall chest that stood opposite the dresser in a golden oak bedroom suite. The mirror frame matches its companion dresser exactly: a deep, bowed cornice of heavily figured quartersawn oak under a carved crest of a central fan shell flanked by scrolling acanthus leaves, two full round columns with turned capitals and bases, and a shaped beveled mirror with arched upper corners, each corner filled with a carved acanthus spandrel.

The case is a serpentine-front chest of the hat box form. A long bowed drawer runs the full width under the top, and below it two short serpentine drawers sit beside a cupboard door with a brass keyhole escutcheon, the hat box compartment that gives the form its name. Two long serpentine drawers finish the case. The drawers carry cast brass bail pulls on rosettes with brass keyhole escutcheons, a carved fan shell sits in the corner block at each side of the top drawer, the front corners are rounded, and the chest stands on carved paw feet at the front. The ray fleck across the drawer fronts, the top and the cornice is broad and silvery under a warm golden finish, and the drawer sides and bottoms are a pale secondary wood, clean and dry.

The piece is in remarkably clean condition. The finish is even and original in character, the mirror plate is bright, the carving is complete and the drawers run freely. One bail is lacking from a lower drawer, with its rosettes still in place, and a period replacement is an easy match. There is none of the grime, water staining or pest damage that oak of this age picks up in a garage or barn. It is larger in scale than the run of factory chiffoniers of the form and has plainly spent its life indoors in a well kept house. The matching low dresser with the identical carved crest and pillar mirror arrived with it and is offered separately.

History & Provenance

The chiffonier, a tall chest of drawers often with a small cupboard for hats or collars, was sold as the companion to the low dresser in the American bedroom suites of roughly 1895 to 1910, when quartersawn oak was the national hardwood and the big Midwestern factories in Grand Rapids, Rockford, Evansville and elsewhere sold matched suites through the department store and mail order trade. The shell and acanthus crest, the full round columns, the serpentine front and the paw feet on this example are all stock motifs of those catalog lines, a vocabulary the factories borrowed from Renaissance and Colonial Revival sources and mixed freely. The best suites were cut from the most heavily figured quartersawn stock, and the figure on this chest puts it in that class.

No maker's stamp, paper label or stencil has been found on this piece, and it is offered as an unattributed American factory chiffonier. The dating rests on construction and materials rather than style alone: the quartersawn oak, the pale secondary wood of the drawers, the cast brass hardware, the beveled plate mirror and the carving method are all consistent with manufacture between 1895 and 1910, and nothing about the piece suggests a later reproduction. It arrived with several other pieces of carved oak from the same period, each of which is offered separately.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

A chiffonier is the most useful piece in an antique bedroom: five drawers of real depth and a cupboard, in a footprint not much wider than a nightstand, with a mirror on top that makes it a dressing station in its own right. The height and the carved crest give a bedroom wall a vertical accent that balances a tall bed, and the serpentine front keeps all that storage from reading as a box. It is equally good in a dressing room, a guest room or a hall. The golden oak warms a room against plaster, wallpaper or dark paint, and the figure is good enough to stand on its own. For a designer client it is the complete, unrestored, heavily figured example of the form, and with its matching dresser it makes a suite that is almost never found intact.