One of the topics in a recent morning meeting was the implementation of the STURDY Act. So what is this new law that no one has every heard of? The Stop Tip-overs of Unstable Risky Dressers on Youth Act mandates new guidelines and restrictions on the furniture industry to prevent top heavy casegoods from killing people. Colleagues sat aghast that Congress has nothing better on which to be working but to screw over our livelyhoods. “This must be a knee-jerk reaction to the death of George Washington’s sister,” I commented. “She was killed while rooting around in a highboy for her husband’s secret letters.”
Portrait of Betty Washington Lewis, 1750, by John Wollaston the Younger, Mount Vernon Ladies Association, public domain.
The Stop Tip-overs of Unstable, Risky Dressers on Youth Act, or STURDY, was passed by Congress in December, sneaking into the $1.7 trillion fiscal 2023 spending bill and becoming law when President Biden signed the package in January.
It was introduced by Senator Robert Casey, Jr. (Pennsylvania/Democrat) in February 2021–during a time when the Congress should have been focused on getting the country back to work and getting the economy back on track.
The STURDY Act, summarized according to the Congressional Research Service, reads as follows:
This bill requires the Consumer Product Safety Commission to revise the safety standards for freestanding clothing storage units such as dressers, bureaus, or chests of drawers. Such standards must include specified testing related to tip overs and new warning requirements for all such products entering the U.S. market.
Portrait of Elizabeth Hill Carter Byrd, 1755-1756, by John Wollaston the Younger, public domain.
But back to Betty Washington Lewis. One of the most prominent women of the Colonial Era, she was the younger sister of George Washington, the only sister to survive childhood. When she was a teenager she married her cousin Fielding Lewis and became the mistress of a 1270 acre plantation and mansion called Millbrook House, later renamed Kenmore House. Betty is immortalized in a portrait by John Wollaston, pictured in a blue silk dress and bearing a striking likeness to her famous brother.
I love history and art. A self-proclaimed trivia aficionado who occasionally, on a good day, can run the Jeopardy! board, I googled the death of Betty Washington Lewis and little about it, especially regarding a crushing moment and a piece of luxury furniture. Chagrinned, I ventured down a rabbit hole of grand founding mothers.
What I discovered was as troubling as the STURDY Act. I stumbled upon the portrait of Elizabeth Hill Carter Byrd. The daughter of John & Elizabeth Hill Carter of Shirley Plantation, she married William Byrd III of Westover Plantation and a 179,000 acre estate that spanned Virginia to Maryland. Elizabeth died in 1760; some say she died of suicide but the more sensational legend is that she clambered onto a highboy in search of love letters from her husband’s mistress. A highboy or tallboy is a double chest of drawers, or chest-on-chest, stacked upon itself to make a formidable piece of furniture. But what confounded me about the portrait of Elizabeth Hill Carter Byrd is that she is wearing the same blue dress as Betty Washington Lewis.
A highboy is a double chest of drawers stacked upon itself to make an extremely tall piece of furniture.
What? Two of the most prominent Virginian women in Colonial America, practically neighbors, wearing the same blue dress!
Knowing the image of Betty Washington Lewis, anyone can understand my confusion. At some point while reading about the calamitous tallboy accident, my brain must have transposed the two portraits so that I erroneously recalled the incident to involve Betty Washington Lewis. George Washington’s sister was not killed by a toppled highboy; Elizabeth Hill Carter Byrd ostensibly was. So that little mystery is solved.
But still, why the same dress? Did the richest women in America have only one good frock to go around?
These portraits are by John Wollaston, Jr., or John Wollaston the Younger, one of colonial British North America’s most well-known portrait artists. His last known documented commission in Virginia was Martha Custis, later to become Mrs. George Washington. And to heighten the blue dress enigma, she is wearing the same damn outfit!
Regarding Portrait of a Woman, another similar painting by Wollaston except that the collar is not tied at the bustline, the Art Institute of Chicago notes, “as in his other works of the time, the artist employed formulaic poses, gestures, and dress, a result, in part, of looking to English sources for portraiture.”
Portrait of Martha Dandridge Custis, 1757, by John Wollaston the Younger, Washington-Custis-Lee Collection, Washington and Lee University, public domain.
And according to the National Gallery of Art, “Wollaston was a competent but not very inventive painter.”
Mr. Wollaston must have had a few fashionable English prints from which he worked. But if my neighbor or sister-in-law had a portrait in the same dress, I would at least request a different color, which I think Martha Custis did as the artist paired the blue top with a yellow skirt. I wonder that when George got married, if Betty and Martha had one of those awkward moments regarding their portraits like showing up to a ball in the same gown?
In any case, there are varying opinions about Elizabeth Hill Carter Byrd’s actual cause of death. But I’d like to think that the STURDY Act comes 250 years too late to save the disconsolate Mrs. Byrd.
Between 2017 and 2019, more than 11,000 children per year were treated in hospital ERS for injuries related to tipping incidents according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. 79% were kids under the age of six and 75% of fatalities involved a TV. I had heard the statistic about children being killed by televisions but was unaware that they were being killed by upended dressers.
In the new STURDY act, a panel will test and approve furniture items before they can be sold. Any furniture capable of holding clothing which is in excess of 27″ high falls under the new bureaucratic guidelines. I would think that bookshelves and, yes, televisions would be of higher priority than a 27″ dressing table.
Apparently in 2020, Ikea recalled over 820,000 dressers and paid out $46 million to a California family whose kid was killed by a cheap dresser which wasn’t anchored to the wall.
Portrait of a Woman, 1775, John Wollaston, Art Institute of Chicago, public domain.
I don’t want to see children or even founding mothers killed by toppled furniture. And packets containing tip restraints have been included with most casegoods for years–though I rarely see them used. Further, they are usually not attached by the delivery agent as they, due to liability, do not assemble baby beds or hang mirrors. But for anyone with children, this is as integral a part of baby proofing as locking up the Drano or latching the toilet seat.
During Covid lockdowns, the endless two weeks to slow the curve, American workers were badly hurt, especially those in the furniture industry. Mandatory lockdowns in states like North Carolina completely closed furniture factories, so even if frontline associates could sell furniture, it was not being produced. Commission based salesmen had to dip into personal savings to survive the impact. You make $0 on commission if you cannot deliver merchandise. Online sales of furniture spiked as people sheltered in place but, again, delivery was slow and it was money out of the hands of the brick-and-mortar stores and the folks who work in them.
Consumers will also pay the price for the new STURDY Act. Not only has massive inflation on wood, parts, and fuel impacted furniture, but new requirements and guidelines equate to more man hours for companies from design to manufacturing to installation.
And once again furniture industry employees get the shit-end of the stick. Congressmen get paid even if they disrupt supply chains. Plus, the catchy STURDY acronym is overly contrived, and frankly stupid. But remove the S and the Y from STURDY and this new law has a more fitting name: a TURD.
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