circa 1690, white pine (by microanalysis, report present) and oak secondary woods, four board top with applied molded edge to sides, single drawer with rosehead nails, shaped legs with shaped X-stretcher, bun feet, 28-1/4 x 36-1/2 x 21 in.

Provenance: Gift from an anonymous collector York, PA., in 1960; Property from the Brooklyn Museum

Note: In his catalog note for the exhibition catalog that accompanied "Remembrance of Patria: Dutch Arts and Culture in Colonial America, 1609-1776", Roderic H. Blackburn notes that the shaped legs can be found on both English and Dutch furniture, the construction of the drawers - with the sides let into the front board and nailed - is typically Dutch.

This is the only known surviving American dressing table of this form. At least three related high chests are known. One, at the Wadsworth Atheneum and illustrated twice by Wallace Nutting, first in "Furniture of the Pilgrim Century" (1924), fig. 103., and later in "Furniture Treasury" (1962), fig. 327, is made of oak with a five-leg semi-soft wood (probably basswood) base. Another high chest is also in Connecticut while a third was in the collection of Luke Vincent Lockwood and illustrated in his "Colonial Furniture in America, The Illustrated History of a Great Period of Craftsmanship", third edition, vols. I and II, Fig XII, p. 345. The one in Lockwood's collection was found in Connecticut and was made of cherry.

Exhibited: Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY, "Remembrance of Patria: Dutch Arts and Culture in Colonial America, 1609-1776", May 9-Oct 12, 1986.

Literature: Marvin D. Schwartz, "American Interiors 1675-1885, A Guide to the American Period Rooms in the Brooklyn Museum" (Brooklyn, 1968), fig. 5, p. 12; Roderic H. Blackburn and Ruth Piwonka, "Remembrance of Patria: Dutch Arts and Culture in Colonial America, 1609-1776", (Albany, 1988), cat. no. 248, p. 205; Kevin L. Stayton, "Dutch By Design: Tradition and Changed in Two Historic Brooklyn Houses", (Brooklyn, 1990). fig. 2.24, p. 42.