Armoire

Armoire, 1800–20, New Orleans, Louisiana, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Maker Unknown
Date of Creation 1800–20
Location New Orleans, Louisiana
Materials Mahogany, tulip poplar, yellow pine, satinwood, holly, and maple
Institution The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Credit Line Museum Purchase, The Sara and Fred Hoyt Furniture Fund
Accession Number 2009-67
Photo Credit Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

While the populace of other American cities enjoyed storing their clothes and textiles in a variety of case furniture, including chests of drawers, double chests, and clothes presses, the inhabitants of New Orleans and other lower Mississippi River cities like Natchez chose to use a form derived from French armoires. The form arrived in Louisiana with French immigrants and in the minds of French and Caribbean cabinetmakers. Louisiana armoires followed the overall French form with their large double doors and integral central stile, interior belt of drawers, short cabriole legs, and large fiche hinges. Around the beginning of the 19th century with the integration of non-French artisans into New Orleans, some cabinetmakers began to decorate their wares in an Anglo-American fashion. This armoire, which was purchased from a local (but unknown) Natchez family in the 1970s, is ornamented over its entire front with Neoclassical inlays of ovals, swags, bellflowers, bowknots, and a vine with berries emanating from a Classical snake-handled vase. Aspects of this type of inlay and veneer work can be seen from New England to Maryland to western Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee. This armoire represents the melding of a French storage form with Anglo-American decoration. While this type of integration is also seen in the furniture of other cultures arriving in America, the history of Louisiana and its strong French orientation makes this an especially interesting and important form, demonstrating the importance of early furniture of the Mississippi River Valley is to the history of America’s furniture trade.