Sideboard

Description

For the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London 1851, Parisian cabinetmaker Alexander-Georges Fourdinois (1799-1871) created an elaborate monumental sideboard which incorporated carved game from the hunt in its ornamentation. American furniture makers used this decorative scheme in sideboards from the 1850s to the 1870s. The depiction of game in the ornamentation of sideboards appealed to the nineteenth century notion that furniture decoration should suggest a piece’s use and placement. This sideboard, decorated with carvings of hanging game, the hunt narrative of the hound and the board, and various fruits, would have been considered suitable for use in a banqueting hall or dining room. Originally owned by the Orem family of Baltimore, the High’s sideboard was used at Auchentoroly, their Baltimore estate. At the top center beneath the flying-eagle finial is the Orem family coat of arms.