Wayne Stolte

The story of this dressing table starts nearly 6 years ago in Tim Killen's classic furniture class. A fellow student saw a table on a visit to New York's MET museum. He had seen the three-drawer version of the dressing table located in the museum's Haverhill room Measured drawings for a four-drawer version, in museum storage, can be found in Vera Cook Salomonsky's book "Masterpieces of Furniture". When Tim was seeking suggestions for the next class project, the student brought up the table. Over the next couple of months Tim showed us how to make the table, from Sketch-Up design, to final French polishing the top.

Sometime during his table build, my wife saw Tim's project and decided we needed a pair of them as nightstands for our bedroom. I made the first 3-drawer version while Tim was still working on his table, and recently, I decided to make the 4-drawer version to see how well my skills had improved from making other projects over the subsequent years. The veneers and bandings were all the same as what I used previously. I had planned ahead, and except for the drawer pulls, I had ordered enough materials, and luckily avoided using them on someother woodworking mission. I had used sketch-up to draw up the bandings from pictures of the original, and Salomonsky's drawings, and then had Matt at InlayBandings.com make them for me. During this build I was careful to use the same mahogany board for the sides, back, legs, and top. The huge challenge of this piece is the curved front, trying to keep a 

common curvature along all the drawers and dividers. The drawers required thicker material than is commonly available, so I face glued a few boards of mahogany to make the substrate. The square fronted drawers were especially challenging because they are trapezoidal shaped and required dovetails on an angled front surface.

Did I build this one the same way as the previous one? I cannot say, I had evolved, what I did notice over the year plus build, was my eye had improved on veneer matching, and I was more likely to overlook minor woodworking blemishes. Also, brass items had become significantly more expensive, and had to be made to order.

This Hepplewhite Dressing Table is of the Federal Period and is made with Genuine Mahogany with Burl Maple and Mahogany veneers. There are inlay Bandings and Gabon Ebony. It is finished with Platina dewaxed Shellac, and a polyurethane overcoat on the top. It measures 36" W x 19.5" D x 31" H. It was made in Concord, California by This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..