Last Friday and Saturday I attended a furniture seminar at MESDA, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Art in Winston Salem, NC. To cut and paste from their website:
The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) is the preeminent center for researching, collecting, and exhibiting decorative arts made and used by those living and working in the early South. MESDA is home to the finest collection of southern decorative arts in the country.
I have been there several times and have taken hundreds (close to 500) pictures. Yet today’s post is about two pieces I saw at area antiques malls on the way home.
Somethin’s Wrong With the Boy.
MESDA has the best of the best, an amazing collection of venerated furniture. Things to be worshipped, studied and admired from afar. But not necessarily relatable. I’ll never own anything on this level. Or be able to build anything on the level. Or examine anything on this level at a retail establishment.
I enjoy spending time with primitive and vernacular furniture. Furniture that my ancestors might have had. Furniture that might not survived into the 21st century.
Like this odd chest:
Dovetailed.
Bin lids are not hinged. Right bin has a drawer:
Left bin has no drawer:
Feet are faux-wheels:
The other piece is from a more upscale shop. It is a rather unique desk that hides its complexity:
It looks like and is a fall-front desk. Drop the front and reveal:
Open the tambour and see:
Look at the floor in the pigeonholes and see that they:
The drawer below the fall front is dummy drawer, it doesn’t open. Accessible only from above.
Other things of interest, the pulls and rosettes are unique:
There is a crack in the veneer about a third of the way up the fall front:

Looks like the front is glued up from boards running horizontally. Side to side not from hinge to end which might have been stronger.
And the drawers are dovetailed.