Bureau Dressing Table
Eastern Virginia
Isle of Wight or Sussex County
Walnut with Yellow Pine Secondary
C. 1770-1780
34” H, 38.5” W, 21” D
Termed variously Dressing Tables, Bureau Tables or Kneehole Dressing Tables, the form was popularized by Thomas Chippendale which he described the tables as a “Buroe dressing table”. ‘. Whatever the exact terminology, all conform generally to the form of a long upper drawer over columns of 2 or three drawers separated my a kneehole which was often fitted with a prospect door opening into a small storage cabinet. The long top drawer was sometimes fitted with divided compartments and a looking glass or, in some cases, a writing surface on rachets. In her essay on the bureau table form in Winterthur Portfolio, decorative arts scholar Nancy Goyne Evans suggested that these table were primarily an urban form and only infrequently produced by beyond the settled eastern seaboard cities. This may explain the relative rarity of bureau tables in the 18th century South with the known examples clustered in commercial centers such as Charleston and Williamsburg, with a few scattered among the wealthy landowners in tidewater Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas. MESDA researchers recorded only a dozen southern examples with six attributed to Charleston, three to Williamsburg and environs, one each in Edenton, New Bern, Maryland and the Virginia piedmont.
Adding to this short list is our newly discovered example with a family history in Isle of Wight County, Virginia which is located just across the James River from Williamsburg and approximately half way between Norfolk and Petersburg – Virginia’s principal cabinetmaking centers of the period. The construction is simple yet sophisticated and clearly the work of a trained cabinetmaker. The mitered feet are original and joined by complex blind dove tails. The top and bottom of the case are dovetailed to the sides with the walnut top boards affixed to a pine sub-top. The drawer cases are tenoned into and through the bottom board and are separated by a large prospect compartment with a raised panel door. Many of the construction features are characteristic of the best craftsmen working in Tidewater, Virginia in or near the urban areas mentioned above.
Probable line of descent of the bureau table:
Likely first owner: Major Andrew Woodley (1769 IOW- 1829 IOW) married his cousin Elizabeth Hill Harrison. They built “Four Square” in 1807. Prominent and wealthy citizen, large landowner, Sherriff of Isle of Wight County, Collector of Revenue and Presiding Judge of the County Court.
To their daughter, Francis Hill Woodley (1805 Isle of Wight County-1874 Portsmouth, VA) married to Samuel Thomas, (1792-1841,buried in Portsmouth VA) Chairman of the Isle of Wight County Board of Supervisors.
To their son, Julius Octavius Thomas (1834-1912) Smithfield, Isle of Wight County.
To his son, Julius Waverly Thomas (1870-1950) Isle of Wight County
To his daughter, Waverly Gwin Thomas McLeod (1912 IOW-1996 Fayetteville, NC)
