A tallboy is a piece of
furniture incorporating a
chest of drawers
A chest of drawers, also called (especially in North American English) a dresser or a bureau, is a type of cabinet (a piece of furniture) that has multiple parallel, horizontal drawers generally stacked one above another.
In American English a ...
and a
wardrobe
A wardrobe or armoire or almirah is a standing closet used for storing clothes. The earliest wardrobe was a chest, and it was not until some degree of luxury was attained in regal palaces and the castles of powerful nobles that separate accommo ...
on top. A highboy consists of double chest of drawers (a chest-on-chest), with the lower section usually wider than the upper. A
lowboy
A lowboy is an American collectors term for one type of dressing table, vanity, or duchess ( Australian English).Lowboy is a "collectors term for a dressing table made in 18th century America often with a matching highboy ". It is a small tab ...
is a table-height set of drawers designed to hold a clothes chest,
which had been the predominant place one stored clothes for many centuries.
Details
Whereas the chest of drawers in its familiar form contains three long and two short drawers, the highboy has five, six, or seven long drawers, and two short ones. It is a very late 17th-century development of the smaller chest. The early examples are walnut, but by far the largest portion of the many that have survived are
mahogany, this being the wood most frequently employed in the 18th century for the construction of furniture, especially the more massive pieces. Occasionally the walnut at the beginning of the vogue was inlaid, just as
satinwood
Satinwood may refer to:
* A name for a wood that can be polished to a high gloss derived from certain species of flowering plants:
* ''Brosimum rubescens'', Red satinwood, Suriname satinwood
* ''Ceratopetalum apetalum'', Scented satinwood
* ''Ch ...
varieties were inlaid, depending for relief upon carved
cornice-mouldings or gadrooning, and upon handsome
brass
Brass is an alloy of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn), in proportions which can be varied to achieve different mechanical, electrical, and chemical properties. It is a substitutional alloy: atoms of the two constituents may replace each other wit ...
handles and
escutcheons.
The tallboy was the wardrobe of the 18th century, but it eventually gave place to the modern type of wardrobe, which, with its sliding doors, was speedily found to be not only capacious as its predecessor but more convenient of access. The topmost drawers of the tallboy could only be reached by the use of bed steps, and the disappearance of high beds and the consequent disuse of steps exercised a certain influence in displacing a characteristic piece of furniture which was popular for at least a century.
Philadelphia
In the mid-18th century, highboys in
North America became very ornate. The most elaborate pieces came from
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
. At that time it was one of the most important American cities, both before and after the
American Revolution
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...
, and was a center of style and culture.
[Highboy](_blank)
. National Gallery of Art.
See also
*
Thomas Chippendale
Thomas Chippendale (1718–1779) was a cabinet-maker in London, designing furniture in the mid-Georgian, English Rococo, and Neoclassical styles. In 1754 he published a book of his designs in a trade catalogue titled ''The Gentleman and Ca ...
*
''High chest of drawers'' (Indianapolis Museum of Art)
References
*
External links
Tallboys and the like 1913
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tallboy (Furniture)
Furniture
History of Philadelphia
Cabinets (furniture)