Étagère

This lavishly carved and decorated étagère was made by Julius Dessoir, a French émigré who came to America in the late 1840s and quickly established a thriving furniture-making business on Broadway, the most fashionable street for shopping in 19th-century New York City. Designed primarily for 19th-century parlors, rococo revival étagères, like this example, typically displayed vases of flowers, scientific specimens, and fine porcelain and marble, seen from the round on mirrored shelves. The Taylor family of St. Paul used this étagère in their parlor at 99 Mackubin Avenue. After daughter Maud Van Cortlandt Taylor married Louis W. Hill in 1901, the object made its way to their home at 260 Summit Avenue in St. Paul, next to the home of Louis' father, the railroad baron James J. Hill. Dessoir étagère in the Taylor parlor at 99 Mackubin Street, St. Paul, c. 1890 Courtesy of a private collector