Barry Chest
Status: For Sale
General Description: A Highly Important Classical Mahogany "Eliptic Bureau" with "Columns and Egyptian Figures", attributed to Joseph B. Barry & Son, Philadelphia, circa 1815.
Details: Classical "Egyptian" terms at the front corners -- female figures wearing turban-like headdresses with fringed folds of drapery at each side of the head, surmounting reeded panels on finely carved feet. The bureau is among the most fully developed of several examples of a form that is attributed to Joseph Barry on the basis of his offer in The Philadelphia Auroro General Advertizer of March 30, 1815 to sell "3 pair Eliptic Bureaus, columns and Egyptian figures. " All examples of this type of bureau have bow fronts with richly figured mahogany veneers. They stand either on horizontally reeded legs, usually described as beehive in shape, or on a plinth base similar to designs published in George Smith's Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (London: 1808). The design of the busts appears to be directly derived from a design for a Bookcase in Thomas Sheraton's Cabinet-Maker, Upholsterer, and General Artist's Encyclopaedia (London, 1807). In the early 19th century, Thomas Chippendale the Younger designed and made case pieces with Classical terms surmounting reeded panels above carved feet quite similar to these terms. The tapered square columns with stylized human feet and busts of turbanned or unturbanned "Egyptian " figures are most likely derived from Thomas Sheraton's Cabinet-Maker, Upholsterer and General Artist's Encyclopedia (London: 1793). Beneath the busts, the terms continue in moulded and reeded tapering panels terminating in finely carved pairs of feet facing forward (as do the heads), all on the plinth base of the bureau. The piece exhibits several characteristics of Barry chests, including the term figures, the elliptical shape, the torus mouldings at top and bottom of the plinth base, four turned and horizontally reeded or "beehive " feet, and richly figured mahogany veneers on the front of the piece, cf. Fennimore and Trump, "Joseph B. Barry, Philadelphia Cabinetmaker, " The Magazine Antiques, May, 1989. The front panels supporting the term heads consist of two moulded sections divided by a reed while the side panels are simply moulded with plain central sections. Width: 44 3/4 inches; Depth: 25 3/4 inches; and Height: 41 3/4 inches. Construction: The elliptical drawers are graduated in size and veneered in book-matched panels of flame mahogany. The primary wood is mahogany with tulip poplar drawer sides and backs and white pine bottoms. The top and side panels are solid mahogany boards. The backboard is of tulip poplar set within a four-sided frame of white pine.
