Sideboard
Rooms created specifically for dining became more widespread in post-Revolutionary America. They required new, specialized forms of furniture, including the sideboard. This graceful, serpentine-front sideboard is one of two that George Washington purchased from John Aitken in Philadelphia in February 1797 for his dining room, or "New Room," at Mount Vernon. With its clean, straight lines and flat surfaces decorated with delicate inlays, it exemplifies the sophisticated lightness and restrained elegance of the Federal or neoclassical style. When not being used for serving food during meals, it held linens and other dining equipage, and provided display space for knife boxes, ceramic figurines (or "images").
See M-2479 for a similar, non-Washington sideboard also attributed to John Aitken.
Top center drawer front and central cabinet doors solid; left cabinet door with seven horizontal laminations; right drawer with five horizontal laminations. No stringing along bottom front of case.
Published ReferencesCarson, Marian S. "Washington Furniture at Mount Vernon, I: The Banquet Hall," American Collector 16, no. 4 (May 1947): 7, 17, fig. 4.
Fede, Helen Maggs. Washington Furniture at Mount Vernon (Mount Vernon, VA; MVLA, 1966), pp. 60, 63-64, fig. 51.
Hornor, William M. Blue Book of Philadelphia Furniture (Philadelphia: 1935), p. 241.
Iverson, Marion Day. The American Chair: 1630-1890 (New York: Hastings House Publishers, 1957), pp. 214, 224, fig. 173.
Ormsbee, Thomas Hamilton. "Thomas Shearer and Sideboards," American Collector (July 1941): 10-12.
Prime, Alfred Coxe. The Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia, Maryland, and South Carolina, 1786-1800 (The Walpole Society: 1932), pp. 164-65.
Riggs, John Beverly. "A Memorandum on the Mount Vernon Sideboards," August 31, 1952. **88-page study done before executor's sale of MW's belongings known and now discredited. No copy in object folder
Beirne, Mrs. Rosamond R. (Vice Regent for Maryland). "The Case of President Washington's Sideboard Tables," October 13, 1952.
Wall, Charles Cecil. "The Original Mount Vernon Sideboards," March 13, 1961.
Wall, Charles Cecil. "The Sideboard in the Dining Room," March 16, 1961. **No copy in object folder
Clipping from Alexandria Gazette, July 2, 1940, reprinting notices from 1873, including repair and return of Mount Vernon sideboard