The handles and escutcheons of the knife-boxes are of silver. Upon the top of the sideboard are several pieces of Sheffield plate. At each end is a double coaster upon wheels, with a long handle. Another double coaster, somewhat higher and with reticulated sides, stands beside the coffee-urn, and two single coasters are in front. All of these coasters have wooden bottoms, and were used to hold wine decanters, the double coasters upon wheels having been designed, so the story goes, by Washington, for convenience in circulating the wine around the table.
Illustration [80] shows a Hepplewhite sideboard with a serpentine front, the doors to the side cupboards being concave, as well as the space usually occupied by bottle drawers, while the small cupboard doors in the middle are convex. A long rounding drawer extends across the centre and projects beyond the cupboard below it, while a slide pulls out, forming a shelf, between the long drawer and the small cupboard. There are no bottle drawers in this sideboard. The doors are inlaid with a fan at each corner, and fine lines of holly are inlaid around the legs, doors, and drawer. The silver pieces upon the sideboard top are family heirlooms. The large tea-caddies at each end are of pewter finely engraved. This sideboard is owned by Francis H. Bigelow, Esq., of Cambridge.
A charming little sideboard owned by Mr. Bigelow is shown in Illustration [81]. The ordinary measurements of sideboards like the last two shown are six feet in length, forty inches in height, and twenty-eight inches in depth. These measures, with slight variations, give the average size of Hepplewhite sideboards. Occasionally one finds a small piece like Illustration [81], evidently made to fit some space. This sideboard measures fifty-four inches in length, thirty-four in height, and twenty-three in depth.
Illus. 80.—Hepplewhite Serpentine-front Sideboard, 1790.
It has no cupboard, the space below the slightly rounding drawer in the centre being left open. There are fine lines and fans of inlaying in satinwood, and in the centre of the middle drawer is an oval inlay with an urn in colored woods. The handles are not original, and should be of pressed brass, oval or round. The silver service upon the sideboard is of French plate, made about 1845, and is of unusually graceful and elegant design.
Hepplewhite’s sideboards seldom had fluted legs, which seem to have been a specialty of Sheraton, though the latter used the square leg as well. A feature in some of Sheraton’s designs for sideboards was the brass railing at the back, often made in an elaborate design.
Illus. 81.—Hepplewhite Sideboard, about 1795.