Lot Essay
With its elegantly carved palmette capped and alternating C-scroll-carved urn, and cartouche and acanthus-carved cabriole legs, this tilt-top tea table embodies the sumptuous complexity of the 18th century rococo aesthetic. Several related elaborately carved and embellished Philadelphia tilt-top tea tables attributed to Thomas Affleck (1740-1795) suggests this table is from his shop; a 1772 entry in William Logan's cashbook to Thomas Affleck strengthens this connection. According to family tradition, this tea table was made for William Logan's daughter, Sarah, in 1772. Logan's surviving cashbook and several family probate records and correspondences support this.
William Logan was the second and oldest surviving son of James Logan of Stenton (see Christie's New York, 21 June 1995, lot 217). Like his father, William Logan was an important figure in Philadelphia's business community. An integral member of Philadelphia's wealthy Quaker elite, Logan was a merchant and after 1741, assumed his father's position as a representative of the Penn family in America. Upon James Logan's death in 1751, William inherited his father's property and ostensibly retired to Stenton to supervise its 500 acres.
Married to Hannah Emlen, Logan had six children, four of whom survived to adulthood; Sarah was his only daughter. In 1772, Sarah married Thomas Fisher, a wealthy Philadelphian who, like Sarah, was a descendant of William Penn's original group of advisors to America. It was presumably for this marriage that William Logan ordered Sarah's furniture from Thomas Affleck.
Logan's cashbook entry for April-May 1772 explains clearly, "Expences on my Daughter...to Thomas Affleck for the Amt [sic] for Cabinet Work he made for furniture for her life...L72, 15." The cashbook also identifies James Reynolds, who was paid L50 for his work, as the carver of this group of furniture. A sidechair and chest-on-chest also from this order and with similar history of ownership are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and are illustrated in Hecksher, American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Late Colonial Period: The Queen Anne and Chippendale Styles (New York, 1985) p. 99, fig. 53 and p. 226-227, fig. 147. The sidechair of this group has similar shell-edge carving emerging from the C-scroll of its crest to the carving on the urn of the table illustrated here.
Several related tea tables both documented and attributed to Affleck are in the museum and private collections. A similar tea table is illustrated in The Magazine Antiques, vol. XXXVI, no. 4, (October 1939), frontispiece; a tea table attributed to Affleck made for Cornelius Stevenson with extravagently leaf-carved capped urn sold in these Rooms, January 20, 1990, lot 664; described by William Macpherson Hornor as, "The Acme of Perfection in American Piecrust Tables...," a closely related piecrust tea table made by Thomas Affleck for Governor John Penn has similar knee carving and guilloche chain-carving at base of its pillar (Hornor, pl. 223). A tea table with palmette-carved ring and C-scroll-carved ball is in the collection of Winterthur and is illustrated in Downs, American Furniture: The Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods, fig. 376. Another similar table in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is illustrated in Hipkiss, The M. and M. Karolik Collection of Eighteenth Century American Arts, (Cambridge, 1941) p. 104, pl. 56.
William Logan was the second and oldest surviving son of James Logan of Stenton (see Christie's New York, 21 June 1995, lot 217). Like his father, William Logan was an important figure in Philadelphia's business community. An integral member of Philadelphia's wealthy Quaker elite, Logan was a merchant and after 1741, assumed his father's position as a representative of the Penn family in America. Upon James Logan's death in 1751, William inherited his father's property and ostensibly retired to Stenton to supervise its 500 acres.
Married to Hannah Emlen, Logan had six children, four of whom survived to adulthood; Sarah was his only daughter. In 1772, Sarah married Thomas Fisher, a wealthy Philadelphian who, like Sarah, was a descendant of William Penn's original group of advisors to America. It was presumably for this marriage that William Logan ordered Sarah's furniture from Thomas Affleck.
Logan's cashbook entry for April-May 1772 explains clearly, "Expences on my Daughter...to Thomas Affleck for the Amt [sic] for Cabinet Work he made for furniture for her life...L72, 15." The cashbook also identifies James Reynolds, who was paid L50 for his work, as the carver of this group of furniture. A sidechair and chest-on-chest also from this order and with similar history of ownership are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and are illustrated in Hecksher, American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Late Colonial Period: The Queen Anne and Chippendale Styles (New York, 1985) p. 99, fig. 53 and p. 226-227, fig. 147. The sidechair of this group has similar shell-edge carving emerging from the C-scroll of its crest to the carving on the urn of the table illustrated here.
Several related tea tables both documented and attributed to Affleck are in the museum and private collections. A similar tea table is illustrated in The Magazine Antiques, vol. XXXVI, no. 4, (October 1939), frontispiece; a tea table attributed to Affleck made for Cornelius Stevenson with extravagently leaf-carved capped urn sold in these Rooms, January 20, 1990, lot 664; described by William Macpherson Hornor as, "The Acme of Perfection in American Piecrust Tables...," a closely related piecrust tea table made by Thomas Affleck for Governor John Penn has similar knee carving and guilloche chain-carving at base of its pillar (Hornor, pl. 223). A tea table with palmette-carved ring and C-scroll-carved ball is in the collection of Winterthur and is illustrated in Downs, American Furniture: The Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods, fig. 376. Another similar table in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is illustrated in Hipkiss, The M. and M. Karolik Collection of Eighteenth Century American Arts, (Cambridge, 1941) p. 104, pl. 56.