Antique American Cupboard
CUPBOARDS: PRESS AND COURT CUPBOARDS
About 1670-1700
Oak court cupboard, 1670-1680.
0riginally, a cupboard was literally a Cup Board - an open, three•tiered side table for displaying silver cups. The earliest American examples date from after 1670 and are partly enclosed with panels and doors - cupboards in the modern sense - but clearly meant as status symbols. Known variously as ‘press’ or ‘court’ cupboards Late Renaissance style. Heavy turnings support tiers. Arrangement of doors and drawers between tiers varies. In some examples, the whole of the lower stage is enclosed and closely resembles the front of a chest (see CHESTS, 1620-1740 p. 305).
Oak, pine, curly maple.
Panelled, mortise-and-tenon joints. Drawers,if any, crudely dovetailed. Built in two stages, upper and lower. Each support, however bulky, turned from one piece of wood - not built up - with a dowel at each end for socketing into hole in cornice above and ledge below.
Carving: Strapwork in the manner of T. Dennis, Ipswich, Massachusetts; tulips, sunflowers.
Applied: Geometric mouldings, split banister turnings.
Handles: Wooden knobs, round or turtleback (see CHESTS p. 306).
Oiled and waxed. Applied decoration often stained black.
Prices very high for authentic American examples. English and Welsh types offer a cheaper alternative if patriotism permits.
Turned and dowelled support for cornice. ice.
FAKES
Fakers of American types have been known to re-carve the four legs of a Victorian dining-table and set them around cupboards made up of old panelling decorated with split banister turnings, new but camouflaged with black stain.
DUTCH KAS CUPBOARDS
About 1770-1850
The kas, a Dutch-American version of the Netherlands kast: Full-length cupboard made in New York and New Jersey for more than 100 years.
Painted pine schrank, about 1780.
Baroque, with heavily moulded cornice and turned ball feet.
Door of kas, arched and felded panels.
Fruitwood, gumwood, walnut, pine.
Panelled, the panels often arched and fielded. Usually two or three drawers in base.
Mouldings around panels.
Many painted with still life subjects of fruit and flowers en grisaille (tones of grey), within trompe Poed panels.
Examples with good, original grisaille decoration expensive. Plain, late-18th or early-I 9thC examples are buyable. Old but plain pine cupboards, often imported from Europe, are given the grisaille treatment by skilled decorators who tend to copy the fruit painted on the doors of a well-known museum example.
CUPBOARDS: FRENCH ARMOIRE
About 1680-1800
Mainly French Canadian, but influence felt along Mississippi to New Orleans.
CUPBOARDS: CORNER CUPBOARDS AND CABINETS
About 1720-1850
Above, carved panel, typical of mid-18MC French rococo armoires and boiseries.
Louis XIII-XV. See p. 210.
Canadian examples usually pine. As in France.
Plainer types with shaped panels but no carving can be very good value.
Above, painted and grained federal corner cupboard, Pennsylvania, about 1810.
Unglazed types known as cupboards, glazed ones as cabinets, but the terms tend to be interchangeable.
Rural versions made with little change over long period. Sophisticated types adapted slowly to changing fashions.
Oak, pine, walnut, maple, mahogany.
Some single door width, some double. Both types include the following variations:
I Full-length, standing: Wooden door(s) above and below. Doors panelled.
2 Glazed door(s) above, wood door(s) below. Wood doors panelled, glazed doors before 1800 always composed of separate panes puttied into a framework of glazing bars (astragals).
3 Wood or glazed doors above, or open shelves often framed with cyma scrolls; wood doors below. Arched, architectural types built in.
4 Wood doors.
S Glazed door(s), glazing bars as in 2 above.
6 Open shelves, often cyma-scrolled as in 3 above.
7 Bow-fronted wood doors.
Full-length types sometimes made in two stages, sometimes in one piece. Backs; boards (tongued-and-grooved from early 19thC), nailed on.
A ‘blind’ door is often converted to a glazed one by replacing it with glass – a time-consuming process if done correctly with small panes. A short cut is taken by glueing strips of moulding to a single sheet of glass – easy to see if a careful examination is made. Large sheets of glass were not used for cases until about 1800, and only complex, curved astragals were glued on.
Painted and grained corner cabinet, about 1810.
Geometric mouldings on doors of early oak cupboards. Later rural types usually plain. Architectural, arched type usually has a rounded back and ‘umbrella’ top that is either ribbed or, in exceptionally fine examples, carved with a large shell; this type is flanked by a pair of fluted pilasters crowned with classical capitals. Some mahogany Chippendale types carved with rococo scrolls. In Federal period, more often decorated with neo-classical motifs in marquetry.
Architectural types in pine often painted to match woodwork of room. Pennsylvania, 1820-50, grained effects and swirling patterns in sponged and spattered paint.
It has been said that, if you furnish the corners of a room, the centre will look after itself. It is worth paying a fairly high price fora good cupboard that will bring an awkward corner to I ife.
MARRIAGES
A full-length corner cupboard in two parts may be a marriage of two hanging ones – a glass-fronted one above and a wood (’blind’) door below. Check that the grain of the wood follows through, i.e. that there is consistency in the materials top and bottom.
Above, front uiew of glazed door, glazing bars mitred into frame. Right, rear view of glazed door, bars tenoned into flame and separate panes fitted into bars.
CUPBOARDS: DISH DRESSERS
Right, simple painted dresser, Pennsylvania, early-19thC
Country sideboards: Regional variations of a cupboard base with a rack of open shelves above.
Oak, pine, any suitable local wood.
Oak: Usually panelled.
Pine: Carcase often boarded (planks nailed to frame).
Base of dresser, boarded construction,
Shaping of rack-ends and sometimes of frieze below cornice.
Painted, waxed or left raw.
Surprisingly expensive when compared with average quality of the sophisticated equivalent, e.g. a good but not important mahogany sideboard of the late Empire period.
REPLACEMENT RACKS
The rack of a dresser may not belong originally to the base. If it does not, it will probably have been reduced in width to achieve a good fit. Examine the shelves where they join the ends for signs of recent cutting – slightly open joints with raw edges that may be camouflaged with vacuum cleaner dust mixed with glue, forming a kind of cement. Even the oldest encrusted dust is not as hard as that.