A CLASSICAL MAHOGANY ARMOIRE

This massive armoire descended in the family of American Art patron Luman Reed with a history of manufacture by Duncan Phyfe. Reed turned to Phyfe to furnish his new home at 13 Greenwich street in New York. Included on the bill of sale between Reed and Phyfe was an armoire which is likely the subject piece. This piece displays many characteristics of Phyfe’s work including highly figured mahogany veneers, crossbanding and water leaf and paw feet. Three other armoires by Phyfe are known including a pair he made for James Lefferts Brinckerhoff, which survives with a documented bill of sale from 1816 (Jeanne Sloane, "A Duncan Phyfe Bill And The Furniture It Documents," The Magazine Antiques (May, 1987), pp. 1106-1113, fig. 3) and one that descended in the family of Phyfe’s daughter, Eliza Phyfe Vail.

Phyfe's personal signed copy of the 1810 New York Revised Prices for Manufacturing Cabinet and Chair Work included an entry for "A French Press" with "two flat paneled doors, with two panels in each" from which he would have been aware of the form (Winterthur Museum Printed Book and Periodical Collection). Phyfe may also have received copies of La Mésangère's 1813 issue of Meubles et Objets de Gout in which plate 368 was a design for a "Secretaire" very similar to this example with overhanging cornice, frieze, columns with gilt capitals and bases on square plinths (Tom Armstrong, Amy Coes, Ella Foshay, and Wendell Garrett, An American Odyssey: The Warner Collection of Fine and Decorative Arts (New York, 2001), p. 182-184).