Lowboy

Lowboy

Lowboy

Type of 18th-century American dressing table

For the type of vehicle, see Lowboy (trailer).

A lowboy is an American collectors term for one type of dressing table.[1] It is a small table with one or two rows of drawers, so called in contradistinction to (and designed to match[2]) the tallboy or highboy chest of drawers.[3][4]

A lowboy

History and description

A different type of dressing table.

Lowboys and tallboys were favorite pieces of the 18th century, both in England and in the United States; the lowboy was most frequently used as a dressing-table, but sometimes as a side-table. It is usually made of oak, walnut or mahogany, with the drawer-fronts mounted with brass pulls and escutcheons. The more elegant examples in the Queen Anne, early Georgian, and Chippendale styles often have cabriole legs, carved knees, and slipper or claw-and-ball feet. The fronts of some examples also are sculpted with the scallop-shell motif beneath the center drawer.[4]

Another term for a dressing table equipped with mirrors is vanity and is used to apply makeup and other fashion accessories.[5]

See also

Citations

  1. [1]
    Lowboy is a "collectors term for a dressing table made in 18th century America often with a matching highboy (Campbell 2006, pp. 61, 479)".
  2. [2]
    Gloag 1952, Lowboy.
  3. [3]
    Loomis IV 2011, p. 59.
  4. [4]
    Chisholm 1911, p. 17.
  5. [5]
    Campbell 2006, pp. 331.

General and cited references

  • Campbell, Gordon (2006). The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts: (Two-volume Set). Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. pp. 61, 331, 479. ISBN 9780195189483.
  • Loomis IV, Frank Farmer (2011). Antiques 101: A Crash Course in Everything Antique (2 ed.). Krause Publications. p. 59. ISBN 9781440227387.
  • Gloag, John (1952). A Short Dictionary Of Furniture. Read Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1-4474-9772-1. OCLC 1099027952.
Attribution
Look up lowboy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Lowboy, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.