Lot Essay
Diminutive drop-leaf tables are prized for their petite size, slender proportions, and rarity. Because of their size, these tables were used as breakfast tables, for card playing, or for the drinking of afternoon tea. Made of dense mahogany and fashioned with crisply turned feet, this little table is smaller than most and retains its original iron hinges.
Besides its desirable size, the shape of the skirt rail with the profile of a flattened arch, rather than ogee or simple rounded arch, is highly unusual. Flattened arch skirts are usually seen on tables of larger proportions, and not on dainty examples such as this drop-leaf table. A similar drop-leaf table from Fairfield, Connecticut, also with flattened arch and without knee brackets, is illustrated in Wadsworth Atheneum, Connecticut Furniture, (Hartford, CT, 1967), fig. 164.
Dwight Blaney owned another drop-leaf table of similar size, but with a broken arch skirt, that was illustrated in American Antiques from Israel Sack Collection, vol. 1, pl. 80, no. 247.
Besides its desirable size, the shape of the skirt rail with the profile of a flattened arch, rather than ogee or simple rounded arch, is highly unusual. Flattened arch skirts are usually seen on tables of larger proportions, and not on dainty examples such as this drop-leaf table. A similar drop-leaf table from Fairfield, Connecticut, also with flattened arch and without knee brackets, is illustrated in Wadsworth Atheneum, Connecticut Furniture, (Hartford, CT, 1967), fig. 164.
Dwight Blaney owned another drop-leaf table of similar size, but with a broken arch skirt, that was illustrated in American Antiques from Israel Sack Collection, vol. 1, pl. 80, no. 247.