A tallboy is a piece of
furniture
Furniture refers to objects intended to support various human activities such as seating (e.g., Stool (seat), stools, chairs, and sofas), eating (table (furniture), tables), storing items, working, and sleeping (e.g., beds and hammocks). Furnitur ...
incorporating a
chest of drawers
A chest of drawers, also called (especially in North American English) a dresser or a bureau, or informally a Chester Draws, is a type of cabinet (a piece of furniture) that has multiple parallel, horizontal drawers generally stacked one above a ...
and a
wardrobe
A wardrobe, also called 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 sep ...
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.Lowboy is a "collectors term for a dressing table made in 18th century America often with a matching highboy ". It is a small table with one or two rows of drawers, so call ...
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
Mahogany is a straight- grained, reddish-brown timber of three tropical hardwood species of the genus ''Swietenia'', indigenous to the AmericasBridgewater, Samuel (2012). ''A Natural History of Belize: Inside the Maya Forest''. Austin: Universit ...
, 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:
Originally:
* ''Chloroxylon swietenia'', Ceylon, Sri Lanka satinwood or East Indian satinwood
* '' Zanthoxylum flavum'' (Syn.: ''Fagara flava''), West Indian, Jamaica, Florida or San Domingo satinwood
More generally, vario ...
varieties were inlaid, depending for relief upon carved
cornice
In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative Moulding (decorative), moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, ar ...
-mouldings or gadrooning, and upon handsome
brass
Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, in proportions which can be varied to achieve different colours and mechanical, electrical, acoustic and chemical properties, but copper typically has the larger proportion, generally copper and zinc. I ...
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
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...
became very ornate. The most elaborate pieces came from
Philadelphia
Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
. At that time it was one of the most important American cities, both before and after the
American Revolution
The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a colonial rebellion and war of independence in which the Thirteen Colonies broke from British America, British rule to form the United States of America. The revolution culminated in the American ...
, and was a center of style and culture.
[Highboy](_blank)
. National Gallery of Art.
See also
*
Thomas Chippendale
Thomas Chippendale (June 1718 – 1779) was an English woodworker 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 Gen ...
*
''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)