Carved Quartersawn Oak Low Dresser, Pillar Mirror, c. 1895–1910

The Piece

An American low dresser in quartersawn oak with a tall pillar mirror, the grandest bedroom form of the golden oak era. The mirror frame is the piece's signature. A deep, bowed cornice of heavily figured quartersawn oak carries a carved crest of a central fan shell flanked by scrolling acanthus leaves that terminate in volutes at either end. Below the cornice, two full round columns with turned capitals and bases frame a shaped beveled mirror with arched upper corners, each corner filled with a carved acanthus spandrel. The mirror sits on a plain back rail above the dresser top.

The case is a serpentine-front low dresser of three drawer tiers: two short bowed drawers across the top, each with a brass knob pull and a brass keyhole escutcheon, over two long serpentine drawers fitted with cast brass bail pulls. A carved fan shell sits in the corner block at each side of the lower drawers, the front corners are rounded, and the case stands on carved paw feet at the front. The top is a single wide expanse of quartersawn oak with a molded edge, and the ray fleck across the top, drawer fronts and cornice is as dramatic as the figure gets, broad silver flakes running the full width under a warm golden finish.

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 case is tight. 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 dressers of the form and has plainly spent its life indoors in a well kept house. A matching chiffonier with the identical carved crest and pillar mirror arrived with it and is offered separately.

History & Provenance

The low dresser with a tall pillar mirror was the centerpiece of the American bedroom suite between roughly 1895 and 1910, when quartersawn oak was the national hardwood and the big Midwestern factories in Grand Rapids, Rockford, Evansville and elsewhere sold matched suites of dresser, chiffonier, washstand and bed 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 dresser 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 dresser. The dating rests on construction and materials rather than style alone: the quartersawn oak, 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 pillar-mirror dresser brings height and light to a bedroom in a way no modern low chest can. The mirror doubles the room, the columns and crest give the wall a focal point, and the wide top is a proper dressing surface with room for a lamp, a tray and the mirror itself. The two long drawers hold a full wardrobe of folded clothes and the short drawers take jewelry, scarves and the small things. It belongs in a principal bedroom with a tall bed, and it is just as good in an entry hall as a console with a mirror, where the golden oak warms a room against plaster, wallpaper or dark paint. For a designer client it is the complete, unrestored, heavily figured example of the form, and with its matching chiffonier it makes a suite that is almost never found intact.