Virginia Low Cupboard

This is a reproduction of a Low Cupboard of 1690 from Tidewater, Virginia. There is a beautiful color picture of the piece in the Southern Furniture reference below. I used this picture, importing to SketchUp to design a similar-sized cupboard to serve as a media cabinet and support for the flat-screen TV in the family room. I would call this design a typical post/panel construction with paneled doors. The painted decoration is from the other reference cited below. I used acrylics for this art work and tried to match the colors used on the Massachusetts original. SketchUp provided all the templates for doing this painted art work.

The material is Monterey Pine with wrought iron rat tail hinges from Horton Brasses.

References:

• Southern Furniture 1680-1830, page 493

• Painted decoration based on Chest of Drawers made in the Hadley area of the Massachusetts Conn. Valley.

• See Furniture of Historic Deerfield, page 175.

Painting the ornamentation

This video shows how I used paint ornamentation on a reproduction of a Low Cupboard of 1690 from Tidewater, Virginia. I used geometric paint ornamentation from another period piece, a Hadley Chest from Massachusetts Connecticut Valley.