Vanity of vanities: a Tiffany and Company rediscovery.(set of accessories discovered at Tiffany and Company)

Among the many original furnishings at Maymont, a restored Gilded Age mansion in Richmond, Virginia, the most fantastic are surely the dressing table and chair illustrated in Figure 1. Made by Tiffany and Company, they are constructed of narwhal tusk and silver and were originally owned by James H. (1841-1922) and Sallie May Dooley (1846-1925), for whom the house was built in 1893. Photographs taken in 1926, shortly after Maymont became a museum and park (through the Dooleys' bequest), show several accessories from a large vanity set atop the dressing table. By 1975, when the nonprofit Maymont Foundation took responsibility for the estate, all the accessories had disappeared.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

However, about six weeks ago, while undertaking conservation work on other objects in the house, the curatorial staff called in a locksmith to open a long-sealed dresser. Inside, astonished staff members found twenty-two pieces of the silver and ivory toilette set wrapped in Richmond newspapers dating from 1928 to 1930 (Fig. 2). While years of ongoing restoration and conservation had exposed the mansion and its approximately one thousand original furnishings to intense scrutiny, the Tiffany and Company cache had remained safely hidden in plain view. The 1926 photographs show that in addition to the surviving pieces, there was also a second perfume bottle; and fittings in the table's swing-out "drawers" indicate that a second button-hook, small scissors, and an unidentified cylindrical item were also originally part of the set.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Dooley, a Richmond business and civic leader, and his wife were no strangers to Tiffany and Company, as the Maymont collection attests. (1) The curious silver and narwhal tusk dressing table and chair would have appealed to their penchant for unusual furniture, which is evident throughout the house. Unfortunately, however, all the personal papers in the house were burned immediately after Sallie Dooley's death, so no documents regarding the purchase of the dressing table, chair, and matching vanity set survive; and to date Tiffany and Company archives have revealed little about this remarkable ensemble. In July 1926, in response to a letter from Mrs. William C. Bentley, who had been hired by the City of Richmond to head the newly formed house museum, Tiffany and Company wrote that while the original records could not be located, "these pieces were made for exhibition at the St. Louis Exposition." (2) And, indeed, judging by a table of Tiffany and Company pattern numbers, those on the Maymont objects were assigned to pieces designed in 1903. (3) Moreover, newspapers used as padding between the mirror and its backing date from 1903 and 1904. Even so, no source has yet come to light actually placing the set at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis in 1904.