This is very similar to the other Lady’s Dressing Table (362F) owned by The Paxton Trust, but this one has historically lost the ratcheted mirror. It was conserved in 2022 by Fergus Purdy with the support of Museums Galleries Scotland. Like the other example, this dressing table would have been used by Penelope Home and her female friends who came to visit Paxton. Penelope was probably born in the Caribbean and may have met Ninian Home there. In Grenada, they enslaved around 250 African people at Waltham estate. Penelope and Ninian loved having fellow planter’s daughters to stay at Paxton House—Thomas Townsend’s two daughters came to stay at Paxton in the late 1780s, in addition to Nancy Stephens, so these girls may have used this dressing table.

The two folding lids open outwards from the middle to reveal a fitted top which contains sunk compartments, some with lids and brass ring handles. There are sham drawer fronts and cock bead panelled sides and ebony outlined upright panels flanking the drawer fronts. It is supported on tapered legs and castors. When commissioned, it cost £5 18s – the equivalent of around £715 in 2022. It would be impossible today to commission an identical piece for that amount.

This Lady’s dressing table, of smaller size than a Gentleman’s shaving table, is for dressing only, having no provision for a basin or water jug. The ‘bottles’ referred to by Chippendale were for hair pomades and cosmetics. The other compartments with brass handled lids might have contained small items of jewellery.

Although Chippendale supplied several documented dressing tables there are surprisingly few surviving examples of this understated form, with plain folding top on slender tapered legs. There are however, three documented examples from the Home commission.