A CHIPPENDALE CARVED MAHOGANY DRESSING TABLE

With its graceful cyma-shaped apron, delicately carved pinwheels, peaked knees and ball-and-claw feet, this dressing table is an exceptional example of eighteenth century Salem cabinetmaking. The probable en suite high chest of drawers is now in the collection of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta (fig. 1) and is illustrated in Albert Sack's The New Fine Points of Furniture Early American; Good, Better, Best, Superior, Masterpiece (New York, 1993), on pp. 198 as well as on the title page. This dressing table shares the same original brasses and fine imported mahogany as the high chest, making the two a likely pair. Heralded as a masterpiece by Sack, this suite exhibits the distinctive characteristics of the extraordinary furniture produced in the colonial port city of Salem, Massachusetts.