Owned by the Hart, Wendell, Ffrost, Hale, Warner and Pierce families of Portsmouth and Durham, pembroke tables with serpentine leaves, a single drawer, molded legs and carrot or heart pierced stretchers were one of the more widely made forms for entertaining in coastal New Hampshire (Jobe, ed., Portsmouth Furniture (SPNEA, 1993), fig. 56). Termed breakfast tables by Thomas Chippendale in the editions of his pattern book in 1754 and 1762, and Pembroke tables by the time Thomas Sheraton published the first edition of his designs in 1793, tables with drop-leaves were most often placed in front parlors or sitting rooms and were used interchangeably for card-playing. In his 1754 and 1762 editions, Chippendale illustrated a very similar breakfast table with shaped leaves and pierced stretchers (see illustration; The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Director (London, 1762), plate LIII); soon after Chippendale's design, Ince and Mayhew produced a drawing with carrot-pierced stretchers for a night stand which are nearly identical to the stretchers on most Portsmouth breakfast tables The Universal System of Household Furniture (London, 1762), plate XXXIII).

The simple form of this table relates to an example that descended in the Ffrost family of Durham which is now in the collection of the Henry Ford Museum, as well as to a table with square leaves and solid stretchers made by George Bright of Boston for Jonathan Bowman in 1770 (Jobe and Kaye, New England Furniture (SPNEA, 1984), fig. 66).