"The Fox and the Grapes" High Chest of DrawersMade in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, North and Central
America Artist/maker unknown, American Mahogany, yellow poplar,
white cedar, yellow pine; brass 1957-129-1Gift of Mrs. Henry V.
Greenough, 1957 LabelFor fashionable eighteenth-century
Philadelphians, high chests and dressing tables represented the
pinnacle of design, cabinetmaking, and carving in bedchamber
furniture. This massive high chest was conceived with a smaller
dressing table (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2012-59-1). On its
central drawer a composition borrowed from a 1761 publication by
English carver Thomas Johnson depicts the moment of truth from
Aesop’s well-known fable “The Fox and the Grapes”: a proud and
skillful fox who cannot reach a bunch of succulent grapes
decries them as sour and not desirable after all. The tale warns
against the ills of greed and vanity, an ironic scene on this
bold emblem of opulence. It is believed that this high chest,
made in Philadelphia between 1765 a