lowboy
A lowboy is an American collectors term for one type of dressing table. It is a small table with one or two rows of drawers, so called in contradistinction to (and designed to match) the tallboy or highboy chest of drawers. • Illustration — Henry Moore, Lowboy, c. Image commissioned for the Index of American Design, the watercolor drawing is located within the National Gallery of Art
Also recorded as low chest · half chest · low case · lowdaddy
lowboy
Isidore Sovensky · This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the National Gallery of Art. Please see the Gallery's Open Access Policy. · CC0
- Field
- dressing table
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wikidata · Q98805174
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Lowboys and tallboys were favorite pieces of the 18th century, both in England and in the United States; the lowboy was most frequently used as a dressing-table, but sometimes as a side-table. It is usually made of oak, walnut or mahogany, with the drawer-fronts mounted with brass pulls and escutcheons. The more elegant examples in the Queen Anne, early Georgian, and Chippendale styles often have cabriole legs, carved knees, and slipper or claw-and-ball feet. The fronts of some examples also are sculpted with the scallop-shell motif beneath the center drawer. Another term for a dressing table equipped with mirrors is vanity and is used to apply makeup and other fashion accessories.
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The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Lowboy, revision 1341897841 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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