Candlestand

Description

Cherry top, pedestal, and feet, and an iron reinforcement plate on the bottom of the pedestal, which holds running dovetails on the leg ends in the dovetail dados in the pedestal bottom. Cherry "doughnut" with a threaded mortise screwed to the underside of the top. Threaded tenon on the upper pedestal end screws into this mortise to secure the top.

Notes

Three-footed stands with cabriolet legs and pedestals became popular in the American colonies after 1730. In the decades following the Revolution, small tables and stands, now frequently referred to as "candle stands," became increasingly common and were widely produced throughout New York and New England. Candle stands retained cabriolet legs long after they became unfashionable on other furniture forms as these and other 19th-century examples attest. Cabriolet legs are well-suited to the tripod design of the feet and the pedestal. Shaker stands, lacking carved and turned decoration in the legs and pedestal, resemble Queen Anne-style stands more than the neoclassical, Federal-style forms from which they were directly derived. What makes Shaker stands distinct is not the legs, which follow the designs of the world, but the shape of the pedestal, which on Shaker stands tapers upward more than on most stands made by non-Shakers. These stands were constructed for durability. The legs are attached to the pedestal with vertical dovetail joints. In order to prevent the joints from sliding, a round metal plate is screwed to the base of the pedestal. The serpentine legs were sawn with the wood grain running diagonally towards the floor, reducing the risk of foot splitting. The pedestal terminates in a threaded tenon that screws into a wooden disk attached to the underside of the top. The construction and finishing details of this stand and #1957.8246.1 are so similar that they are virtually indistinguishable.