With our sincere gratitude and utmost regards, Bay Colony Antiques is proud to bring to market one of the finest antique New England Tiger Maple servers that we’ve encountered in years. The server is almost entirely Tiger Maple with the only exceptions being the top and the Pine secondaries used for the drawers. The stand has a Birds Eye Maple top with an exceedingly rare grain pattern. We had to buy some Birds Eye veneer recently and even with our restorer’s immense stockpile and his connections in the trade we couldn’t find any this good which is what we needed at the time. The raised gallery is joined with exposed dovetails at the back corners and the sides showcase a nice scrolling pattern gradually working its way down to the front edge.
The serve has two drawers each fitted with an embossed brass pull. The dovetails are pretty thin and neat for a country made stand and the drawer panels are also hand chamfered. We’d also like to point out that the cabinet maker purposefully laid out the Tiger Maple grain to run vertical throughout the case with horizontally orientated grain on the legs. Small details like this can be overlooked by journeymen or inexperienced cabinet makers but whoever made this piece 200+ years ago was clearly very competent at his craft. The cabinet maker likely apprenticed in a major New England cabinet shop and later in life took his training to a more rural area where there was significantly less competition, and he could make a better living. This was a common trajectory for a lot of Early American cabinet makers. The server is finished in a beautiful amber color and would also make a nice dressing table with a mirror hung above it. The server is in very good condition with our only notes being minor surface wear, a small loss to the top left of the left drawer, and a small nick on the front edge directly above that. The server measures 30 3/4” inches wide x 18 3/4” deep x 35 3/4” tall.
