highboy

Highboy appeared in American English around 1690 to describe a tall chest of drawers mounted on a stand or table with turned legs. The 'boy' in highboy has no clear etymology. It may derive from bois (French for 'wood'), though this is speculative. It may be an analogy to 'tallboy,' the British term. The -boy suffix also appears in 'lowboy,' the matching shorter piece. No one has definitively explained why Americans named their furniture as if they were naming children.

The American highboy reached its artistic peak in Philadelphia between 1750 and 1790. Cabinetmakers like Thomas Affleck and William Savery produced highboys in the Chippendale style with carved scrolled pediments, flame finials, and intricate ball-and-claw feet. A Philadelphia highboy from this period sold at Christie's in 2005 for $2.1 million, making it one of the most expensive pieces of American furniture ever auctioned.

The form is distinctly American. While British cabinetmakers produced chest-on-chests (tallboys), the high-legged American version with its cabriole legs and ornamental top was a colonial development. The highboy's height — often reaching seven feet — required elaborate pediments that gave cabinetmakers a surface for decorative carving. The furniture became a canvas.

The highboy disappeared from production by the early nineteenth century, replaced by lower, wider forms. It is now exclusively an antique, and 'highboy' is an antiquarian term. The word lives in auction catalogs and museum labels. The furniture it names lives behind velvet ropes.