Oak, joined and carved; dated 1613, with the arms of John Douglas, 5th of Tilquhillie and Mary Young; attrib to an unidentified Scottish maker, probably Aberdeen

Standing dresser or buffet with canopy and central cupboard. The dresser is of joined and panelled construction, and extensive use is made of scratch mouldings on muntins, around panels and on the exposed faces of the rear uprights. Although it was originally a single, full-height structure, it now consists of two parts: below is a deep, rectangular cupboard on turned, fluted legs, with a panelled backboard, and a ‘pot board’ platform at low level; above is the overhanging canopy supported by a vertical back board with two low relief carved heraldic shields, at the foot of which is a non-original, full-width, low shelf on baluster turned front legs. The two shields flanking the central plain panel depict: (left) three stars above a heart, with Roman initials I D and the date ANNO 1613, (right) a recumbent crescent above three chevrons containing crescents with Roman initials M Y. (The lettering of the four initials is defined by a channel to each stroke which does not appear on ANNO.)

The canopy is set at a right angle to the back. It bears on three sides an ogee cornice (75mm high, 40mm deep), carved with a shallow chip-carved guilloche motif, and has a double ended turned finial at each front corner, and a turned knop in the centre, on the underside. On each side, the canopy is supported by a solid, curving spandrel, the face of which is moulded. The underside of the canopy is curved, constructed from seven oak boards (varying between 10.5 and 13cm) aligned laterally (meeting at tongue and groove or V joints). The vertical back consists of three tall panels (max. thickness c8-9mm), two with carved badges and inscriptions flanking a plain panel, above a single full-width board (nineteenth-century and probably replacing a plain panel). The horizontal board is now partially obscured by a nineteenth-century low shelf (HWD: 33 x 32.5 x 111cm) with side rails and turned baluster front legs which was added to stabilise the top after the dresser had been divided into two parts. The shelf is tenoned at the back into the backboard, while the front legs rest on the cupboard top (effectively forming a table surface) which is formed from two nineteenth-century oak boards affixed to the original body of the cupboard. The two boards have shrunk across the grain, causing the biscuit joint to open.

The cupboard has twin doors (30mm thick, panelled, both inner muntins replaced), each with a turned knob handle. Each is supported on two iron hinges (nailed in place); the lower hinge on the PR door is an early replacement, with a filler block of wood. A much damaged keep on either side of the muntin (one with a metal strip) suggests that each door was originally fitted with a lock (removed when the doors were repaired). At the top of the cupboard, running around the front and sides is a complex moulding (held by a mix of pegs and nails), with a similar moulding at the lower edge (held by pegs). On either side of the cupboard are two plain panels. On the PR side the forward panel bears two H stamps. On the PL side the forward panel bears the visible trace of a compassed circle about 6cm in diameter, (perhaps workshop sketching added before the panel was used for the buffet). The floor of the cupboard is nineteenth-century composed of boards aligned front to back which are reinforced underneath by two battens with modern slotted screws. The back of the cupboard is now formed by a nineteenth-century board held by slotted screws, and is presumed originally to have been panelled.

The cupboard framework is tenoned into the rear uprights, while the front stiles are formed by the continuation of the front legs which terminate in feet. The exposed section of each front leg (85mm diameter, height of turned section c51cm) is turned and carved in a distinctive corrugated design of densely gathered linenfold, with carefully delineated tops. Above is a collar of gadroon design, and below is a corresponding collar of stylised petals(?). The backboard continues below the cupboard and is composed of three roughly dressed, plain riven panels of oak (max thickness c15mm), with chamfered edges at the back which show visible shrinkage at the sides (a narrow fillet of wood has been pinned behind the PR panel to conceal the gap). The front face of the rear uprights also lacks scratch moulding below the cupboard. All four feet are plain, squared blocks (the PR rear one replaced with a scarfed section). Just above the floor is a plain ‘pot board’ solid shelf composed of three nineteenth-century boards which have shrunk across the grain.

Construction techniques
Most of the tenon and mortise joints are double-pegged, using large pegs. Applied mouldings are fixed with a mix of pegs and nails (probably around 15 in total). Assembly scratch marks are visible on the twin muntins at the back of the upper section: I, II, III, X. On the proper left upright, just above the cupboard is an X mark (perhaps to distinguish it from the PR post.) On the back, there are clear differences in finish between panels which seem to reflect differences on the front: the carved, upper panels show saw cuts and the kerf marks of a fore-plane (used to remove uneven surface quickly), and their edges are tight fitting, with no chamfers; in contrast the lowest, plain panels (behind the potboard, and with visible knots and other irregularities in figure) which appear to have been riven, show edge chamfers but otherwise little sign of planing. Behind the mid-height shelf, and the back of the cupboard are two wide boards (grained longitudinally) with black staining and fixed with screws, apparently replacements added when the buffet was divided into two sections.

Timber
Four types of oak can be distinguished by eye, while dendrochronological analysis, generously funded by Karen Ellington, was carried out by Dr Ian Tyers in March 2023 (a copy of the report is held by the Furniture Collection). Straight grain eastern Baltic oak (probably dating to the early seventeenth century, was used for the three boards with carving on the upper back, and the framework including rear posts and front legs. Fast growth, knotty oak displaying a conspicuous 'chamf' (ray pattern) which is characteristic of Scottish oak, is used for the cupboard doors and side panels, the ‘ceiling’ boards and spandrels of the canopy; roughly dressed Scots boards are used for the three tall back panels under the cupboard. Additionally, oak of uncertain origin was used for repairs, probably in the nineteenth century.

Modifications
The dresser has been professionally restored in a number of areas without attempt at concealment, using fresh oak, which lacks the observable wear on the original parts. Restorations include (from top down): the mid-section shelf and board behind it, the cupboard top, bottom (under which are two battens with modern, slotted screws) and back, the inner muntin on both cupboard doors, and one door hinge; on the back, the bottom rail; the pot board; repairs to one back foot. The character of these repairs, coupled with the evidence of the 1922 drawings, suggests a nineteenth-century based on their subdued character and the use of modern slotted screws.

The dresser is now in two sections, with the upper back and canopy stabilised by the addition of a low ‘step’ shelf. The full height rear uprights were sawn horizontally just above the cupboard, probably to facilitate its being moved. The resulting loss of stability to the upper section was resolved by adding a mid-height shelf to ‘foot’ the canopy, The added shelf allows the two parts to be simply lifted apart, but any tall items arranged on it would have obscured the carved badges.

Given by Karen Ellington in memory of Marc Ellington DL DHC

Given by Karen Ellington in memory of Marc Ellington DL DHC (Registered file: 2022/332)
On long loan to V&A Dundee from December 2022 (displayed in the Scottish Design Galleries from August 2023)

The arms, initials and date on the dresser (supported by its provenance to Tilquhillie, by Banchory, Deeside) link it to the marriage in 1613 of John Douglas, 5th [laird] of Tilquhillie (a courtesy title based on land ownership), and Mary Young, daughter of Peter Young of Seaton. The Douglases were family of local wealth and standing on Deeside, one of whose principal properties was Tilquhillie Castle near Banchory (SW of Aberdeen), a Z-plan tower house built in 1576 for John Douglas, and restored c.1991. The style of carved armorial badges can be closely paralleled in church woodwork on the east coast in the iconoclastic decades after John Knox, such as the eight carved panels added by local gentry in Crail Kirk in 1594 and 1605. The original tall and monolithic structure would have been very difficult to move more than a short distance and given its height, and is likely to have been assembled inside the room for which it was intended. The distinctive corrugated linenfold observable on the turned front legs is found on Scottish work broadly dateable to between 1590 and 1630.

The dresser remained at Tilquhillie until c.1760 when it was removed to the newly built Invery House nearby. By 1800 until it was sold in 1816, Invery House belonged to James Skene, lawyer and member of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries, and a close friend of Sir Walter Scott. The dresser was still at Invery House in 1922 when it was recorded in the landmark publication on historic Scottish furniture, Details of Scottish Domestic Architecture. A Series of Selected Examples from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, of Stonework, Woodwork, Furniture, Plasterwork, & Metalwork, with introductory and descriptive text by James Gillespie, architect. One hundred and twenty four plates of measured drawings, and six plates of collotype reproductions of photographs. Edinburgh, 1922. Plate 102.

In addition to its very imposing dimensions and intrinsic formal grandeur, various fashionable decorative details would have enhanced the prestige of the dresser and demonstrated its quality at a time of the widespread adoption of classical ornament in Britain: the turned balusters, the extensive use of mouldings, especially on the canopy cornice, and the distinctive fluted front legs which can be paralleled on other contemporary Scottish pieces. The dresser is very proficiently made using panelled construction in oak, a preferred timber for best Scottish furniture at this period, and features joiner’s mitres, reflecting standard practice in British joinery from the mid-16th century onwards. Two types of oak were been used: straight grained Baltic oak for the back panels and much of the structure; irregular, fast growth oak with a distinctive medullary ray pattern (known in Scotland as ‘chamf’, and highly likely to be Scottish) for the cupboard doors, lower back panels, spandrels and canopy boards.

In northern Europe from the 15th century one of the most conspicuous furniture types in the elite household was a tiered buffet or dresser (Anglicized from the French dressoir), consisting of a ‘cupboard’ in the sense of a tiered, open-shelved sideboard for the display of cups and dishes, sometimes with a high back or an overhanging canopy and incorporating an enclosed compartment. 15th-century illustrations emphasise the importance of the canopy which projects at right angles to the upstand, and is more conspicuously decorated than the areas below. Dressed for the occasion with an array of intrinsically fine and finely worked vessels and cupboard cloths including fine linen, the dresser – prominent within a hall or dining chamber - was a key location for the demonstration to members of the household and guests, of the owners’ means, status and largesse. In Scotland the term 'hall' referred originally to a principal living chamber, usually found on the second floor of castles and tower houses built before the later sixteenth century, and then situated, English-fashion, on the ground floor in some houses of this type built in the later sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The hall was used as a communal dining room for the owners, their guests, and retainers.

In Scotland, canopied dressers are mentioned in the Royal Accounts at Holyrood. On the occasion of James IV’s marriage to Margaret Tudor in 1503, the ewer and towel used in the washing ceremony, borne by the Marquis of Huntly, were presumably taken from a piece of similar form. The appearance of such pieces in the early Tudor period is provided by Holbein’s preparatory drawing c.1527 for the portrait of Thomas More and his family (Hans Holbein, Study for the Family Portrait of Thomas More. Pen and brush in black on top of chalk sketch, 38.9 × 52.4 cm. Kupferstichkabinett, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel.c.1527), of which several later painted versions survive, including the V&A’s miniature by Rowland Lockey, dateable 1593-1594 (V&A: P.15-1973)

Following medieval usage, the number of tiers and overall height of a buffet were significant but its structure (generally demountable and largely hidden by its dressing) was basic. During the 15th century at the Burgundian, French and Italian courts, there evolved several types of static, ‘parade’ furniture including the dresser, which were distinguished from their more purely utilitarian predecessors by the higher quality of construction and their integral decoration. A standing (essentially immobile) dresser with carved decoration provided both compartments for the storage of plate and surfaces for its display. The display of heraldic badges, particularly conspicuous during the Elizabethan period and added prominently to the dresser depicted in the Lockey miniature, expressed and reinforced the importance of lineage, dynastic strength and family alliances. A built-in canopy (known at the time as a ‘sayling hance’) was a further expression of physical protection and visual emphasis, functioning in symbolic ways similar to a canopy over a throne chair, grand bed or choir stalls. The buffet with stages went out of fashion in the middle of the 16th century, to be replaced by the sideboard, but some clearly remained in use, perhaps deliberately retained in rooms where traditional ceremonies and an appeal to ancestry was important.

Surviving examples of pre-1620 canopied dressers from the British Isles are extremely rare. Two 16th-century examples of the type with carved linenfold decoration, both Welsh in origin, are the Gwydir (Wyn) cupboard c.1525-45 (The Burrell Collection inv. no.14.436, height overall 245cm) and that associated with the Herbert family c.1500-30, from Raglan Castle, now at Badminton House, Gloucestershire. At the Kendal Castle Dairy there survives in an upper chamber an oak, two-stage canopied dresser with carved decoration and dated 1562, probably commissioned by Anthony Garnett, an associate of Sir Thomas Parr (father of Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s sixth queen from 1543). Significantly, all these examples seem to have been constructed with full height rear uprights for stability, not in two sections to allow them to be demountable, meaning that they were envisaged as essentially immoveable.

Although the use of the canopy on dresser was in decline by about 1600, at least in elite settings in southern England, the idea of a canopied piece of furniture for the display of dining apparatus received a new lease of life from the mid-17th century, especially in Wales and NW England, where the combination of cupboard, shelves and canopy became established as the English high dresser or Welsh ‘cwpwrdd tridarn’. The Tilquhillie Dresser demonstrates that this new trend was also followed in Scotland. Although pieces of comparable form may have been in use in the 18th century, the term 'dresser' is recorded only from 1807 (Cotton). In the 19th century they were found all over Scotland, even in poorer homes although few survive probably because of a combination of changes in fashion, the periodic discarding of large furniture, and the eviction of tenants and their furniture during the clearances. They were usually made of softwood (not oak) and until the mid-19th century are severely practical. (At this time lowland furniture making workshops started supplying chiffoniers in a greater variety of timbers, with decorative carving, and the use of glass or mirror panels in the upper section). The enclosing canopy survives only in Highland dressers (Lowland dressers are open-topped, so that ‘large plates could be placed on the top shelf and extend up without hindrance’, and perhaps because dripping water was less of a problem in White houses than single-storey blackhouses), in the form of a distinctive sloping wood cornice to catch water dripping from the thatch roof on single storey dwellings. Whereas Highland dressers were also used for food preparation (and fitted with overhanging, wide cupboard tops with side ‘feet’ to prevent items falling off), Lowland dressers were essentially for storage and display only. It is noteworthy that the high cupboard base (seen on the Tillquhilllie dresser) is a standard feature of Highland ‘aumrie’ dressers, which may be associated with the Central and Eastern regions, but also of Lowland dressers more generally after 1850 but not found elsewhere in Britain.

Throughout the twentieth century, and up to the present day, a dresser, buffet or sideboard – suitably adorned - remains a significant and symbolic piece of furniture in many Scottish homes.

Selected Bibliography
Gillespie, Details of Scottish Domestic Architecture…(Edinburgh, 1922),
James S. Richardson, ‘Unrecorded Scottish Wood Carvings’ in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. 60: 384–408 (1926)
Annette Carruthers, The Scottish Home (National Museums of Scotland, 1996): chapter 6 ‘The Dining Room’ by Ian Gow, and chapter 5 ‘The Hall and Lobby’ by David Jones
Bernard D. Cotton, Scottish Vernacular Furniture (London : Thames & Hudson, 2008), 84-103
David Jones, The Edinburgh Cabinet and Chair Maker’s Book of Prices, 1805 – 25 (Edinburgh, 2000)

Provenanced British furniture of the early modern period rarely survives, and Scottish furniture is particularly scarce. Surviving furniture tends to be relatively portable and associated with institutions of long standing; large case furniture is exceptionally rare. While there are many similarities to English work of the period, Scottish furniture associated with wealthy patrons or made in the eastern cities often displays distinctive influences of Scotland’s strong economic and political links to continental Europe.

In northern Europe from the 15th century one of the most conspicuous furniture types in the elite household was a tiered dresser (Anglicized from the French dressoir) or buffet, consisting of a ‘cupboard’ in the sense of a tiered, open-shelved sideboard for the display of cups and dishes, sometimes with a high back or an overhanging canopy and incorporating an enclosed compartment. Dressed for the occasion with an array of intrinsically and finely worked vessels and cupboard cloths including fine linen, the dresser – prominent within a hall or dining chamber - was a key location for the demonstration to members of the household and guests, of the owners’ means, status and largesse.

The carved arms, initials and date on this exceptional dresser link it to the marriage in 1613 of John Douglas, 5th [laird] of Tilquhillie, and Mary Young, daughter of Peter Young of Seaton. The Douglases were family of local wealth and standing on Deeside, one of whose principal properties was Tilquhillie Castle near Banchory (SW of Aberdeen), for which the dresser is presumed to have been made.

W.28-2022