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Beau Brummell, or Man's Dressing Table

Period1796

MediumRosewood shellacked to resemble mahogany

Dimensions33 × 31.75 × 15.5 in. (83.8 × 80.6 × 39.4 cm)

InscribedHandwritten Chinese characters in ink on the backs of the drawers indicate "left," "right," and "center."

ClassificationsTables and Stands

Credit LineGift of Mrs. Annie Haight Kerfoot in memory of her parents, Charles and Mary B. Haight, 1937.

Object number1099

DescriptionThe rectangular rosewood frame features a carved skirt with oval rosettes alternating with fluting and bordered above by fluted and beaded bands and below with beading. Six squared, tapered and reeded legs end in spade feet and are braced with a simple H shaped stretcher assembly. The tabletop includes two hinged leaves, the first of which, when supported by two hinged legs, opens to a gaming table surface covered with red wool baize and edged with a narrow strip of leather embossed with a gilt Greek key motif. The table's second leaf opens to reveal a complex assortment of compartments, slots, and spaces for a variety of toiletry bottles, brushes, and a central compartment designed for a hand mirror. A portion of the interior lifts up from the surface, revealing a rectangular storage box with a small prospect door carved with a circular rosette flanked by two pigeonholes and two tiers of small drawers with brass escutcheons. Beneath the pigeonholes and drawers runs a bottom tier of three shallow drawers, the central one of which contains a small hinged looking glass (which may be a replacement).
Curatorial RemarksThe dressing table or beau brummel was copied in China from an English prototype. The Cabinet-Makers London Book of Prices, published in a second edition in 1793, described this furniture form as a harlequin table. The part of it actually called a harlequin was the box which was to rise with springs that contained drawers and pigeon holes for letters. Plate 10 of the price book illustrated a harlequin table generally similar to the one owned by the Association. Two surviving invoices for merchandise shipped from China on board the Wooddrop Sims provide detailed documentation on the nearly $64,000 worth of goods brought back to Philadelphia by Charles Haight in 1797. The cargo included large quantities of fabric, trimmings such as fringe and tassels, tea, umbrellas, fans, window blinds, porcelains, paintings, shawls, some furniture, and a few other specialty items. Among the lots listed were two boxes containing "2 Toilet Tables & frames for Glass" valued at $30.00 each. That compares to a lacquered desk at $14.00, two large porcelain pagodas at $14.00 each, a set of table china at $90.00, and a child's crib at $8.00. In other words, the two toilet tables were very substantial pieces of furniture. Writing about the Association's Haight dressing table in Philadelphians and the China Trade, 1784 - 1844 (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1984), 138, author Jean Gordon Lee dismissed the line item in the invoices as describing this particular piece of furniture. She felt the entry more likely represented a small one-drawer box with a mirror attached to its top. That assumption is not consistent with the $30.00 value placed on each of the dressing tables. The illustrations of the Haight table included in the book also did not reveal that the bottom center drawer of the harlequin box contains a looking glass. It is therefore the opinion of this writer that the listing in the manifest does indeed refer to the Haight dressing table. Other China trade items in the collection of the Association with Haight family provenance include two porcelain pistol-handled urns, and fragments of hand painted Chinese wallpaper removed from the walls of Morrisdon Farm by Annie Haight Kerfoot. The invoices make reference to a box containing "Paper hangings & bordering" valued at $45.00. Other fragments of the paper were sold by Mrs. Kerfoot, a long-time antiques dealer in Freehold, to Charles Williams, from whose collection they were purchased in 1923 by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.NotesThe man's dressing table, also called a beau brummel or harlequin table, was brought from China in 1797 by Charles Haight (1768 - 1849) aboard the sailing vessel Wooddrop Sims. Haight had served as supercargo or owner's agent on that voyage, which left Philadelphia on 15 March 1796. It returned to that city on 28 March 1797, having taken more than a year to make the round trip to Canton. Charles Haight was one of seven children of Joseph Haight (1739 - 1795) and his first wife Rebecca Griffith (died 1777) of Philadelphia. After the senior Haight died, his property in Colts Neck, Monmouth County, called Morrisdon Farm passed to his eldest son William, and to Charles. Charles did not immediately settle on this farm, as by August 1795 he was in Philadelphia. Family tradition states that Haight was a tea merchant who made many trips to China. However, his only documented voyage was the one made aboard the Wooddrop Sims. Haight does not appear in Philadelphia city directories, and the few surviving letters to him are addressed to both Philadelphia and to Shrewsbury, Monmouth County. So the assumption is that he lived at Morrisdon Farm with his brother William's family. Some of the architectural features in the main residence there did reflect Chinese influence. These included the archway in the center hall, and motifs on some of the mantlepieces, which may have been added by Haight. It is also said that the house once contained a Chinese parlor with two nearly lifesize porcelain figures on either side of the fireplace, whose movable heads were wired so as to nod when someone entered the room. In 1815, Charles Haight purchased a 137 acre farm on the ocean next to Whale Pond in nearby Long Branch. Having never married, when he died in 1849 he left his share of Morrisdon Farm to the seven children of his deceased nephew Thomas G. Haight (1790 - 1847). That group included a second Charles Haight (1838 - 1891), whose daughter Annie Haight Kerfoot (1864 - 1940) had come into possession of the dressing table by the early twentieth century. She would therefore have been a great-great niece of the earlier Charles Haight. Mrs. Kerfoot placed the table on loan to the Association on 15 October 1931, five days before its new museum in Freehold opened to the public. It was converted into a gift on 30 December 1937.

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