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Lot Essay
This card table most likely is the mate to the Judge Jasper Yeates card table (fig. 1). They are virtually identical with distinctive foliate-incised and carved knees. The mate was sold in these Rooms, 21 October 1978, lot 291 and according to family tradition the table had descended in the family until the sale. It is illustrated in Hornor, Blue Book Philadelphia Furniture (Washington, D.C. 1935), pl. 33 and Sack, American Antiques from the Israel Sack Collection, vol. 6, (1979), p. 1660.
The Chippendale period is considered the golden age of Philadelphia furniture making. The forms produced are graceful and masterfully carved with attention to lines, symmetry and proportion. Carving by the end of the Queen Anne and continuing to the Chippendale period in Philadelphia had developed a striking character not found elsewhere. Exhibiting all of these elements with its undulating facade, decorative gadrooning and incised foliate embellishment, this fashionable card table is an example of high style Philadelphia cabinetmaking.
During the late Chippendale period there were three distinct styles of card tables in Philadelphia: the square top card table with cabriole legs, the aforementionned table with rounded corners, illustrated here, and the card table with Marlborough legs. Combining additional elements which increased its value during production, this fashionable card table, not only had cabriole legs and ball-and-claw feet, but elaborately carved knees, incised foliate embellishment and gadrooning as well as an interior lined with green baize and was fitted with a drawer. As a product of high style Chippendale cabinetmaking, this card table relates to a very small group of card tables that epitomizes the grandest scale of cabinetmaking of the time with rounded corners, scalloped skirts with intricate foliate and C-scroll carving, and legs with high relief carving and incised decoration above the knee.
JUDGE JASPER YEATES
Jasper Yeates was born in Philadelphia, April 7, 1745. He studied at the College of Philadelphia and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1761 and immediately following a Masters of Arts. He was admitted to the bar in 1765 and became one of the most prominent lawyers with the largest practice in the interior of Pennsylvania. He married Sarah Burd (1748/49-1829), December 20, 1767 and they lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
During the Revolutionary War, Yeates supported the Patriot cause and was chairman of the Committee of Correspondence of Lancaster County in 1776. He wrote an account which was printed of his visit to the site of Braddock's defeat in Western Pennsylvania and was one of the delegates for Lancaster County to the Convention of Pennsylvania which ratified the Constitution of the United States in 1787. He was one of the three Committee persons who reported the form of ratification adopted by the convention. A justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1791-1817, he was appointed by President Washington as one of the commissioners to deliberate with the residents of the western counties in Pennsylvania in order to surpress the Whiskey Insurrection. He also published Reports of Cases in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania from 1791 to 1808 in four volumes.
Yeates died in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, March 14, 1817 and the inscription on his epitaph reads, "He fulfilled the duties of life with fidelity. His integrity was inflexible. As a judge he was most learned and eminent, and in the exercise of his public functions he deservedly obtained the confidence of his fellowcitizens [sic], and he left behind him a name which will only perish with the judicial records of his country."
Owned in the early twentieth century by Ward Brinton (b. 1873), the mate to this card table descended from Yeates' daughter, Mary (b. 1770) who married Charles Smith. Their daughter, Mary Margaret (1808-1869) and her husband, George Brinton were the grandparents of Ward Brinton. This table may have descended along the same lines and inherited or acquired by the family of the present owners in the early twentieth century. For further information on Yeates' life see John W. Jordan, ed., Colonial Families of Philadelphia (Lewis Publishing Co., 1911), vol. I., pp. 402-403.
The Chippendale period is considered the golden age of Philadelphia furniture making. The forms produced are graceful and masterfully carved with attention to lines, symmetry and proportion. Carving by the end of the Queen Anne and continuing to the Chippendale period in Philadelphia had developed a striking character not found elsewhere. Exhibiting all of these elements with its undulating facade, decorative gadrooning and incised foliate embellishment, this fashionable card table is an example of high style Philadelphia cabinetmaking.
During the late Chippendale period there were three distinct styles of card tables in Philadelphia: the square top card table with cabriole legs, the aforementionned table with rounded corners, illustrated here, and the card table with Marlborough legs. Combining additional elements which increased its value during production, this fashionable card table, not only had cabriole legs and ball-and-claw feet, but elaborately carved knees, incised foliate embellishment and gadrooning as well as an interior lined with green baize and was fitted with a drawer. As a product of high style Chippendale cabinetmaking, this card table relates to a very small group of card tables that epitomizes the grandest scale of cabinetmaking of the time with rounded corners, scalloped skirts with intricate foliate and C-scroll carving, and legs with high relief carving and incised decoration above the knee.
JUDGE JASPER YEATES
Jasper Yeates was born in Philadelphia, April 7, 1745. He studied at the College of Philadelphia and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1761 and immediately following a Masters of Arts. He was admitted to the bar in 1765 and became one of the most prominent lawyers with the largest practice in the interior of Pennsylvania. He married Sarah Burd (1748/49-1829), December 20, 1767 and they lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
During the Revolutionary War, Yeates supported the Patriot cause and was chairman of the Committee of Correspondence of Lancaster County in 1776. He wrote an account which was printed of his visit to the site of Braddock's defeat in Western Pennsylvania and was one of the delegates for Lancaster County to the Convention of Pennsylvania which ratified the Constitution of the United States in 1787. He was one of the three Committee persons who reported the form of ratification adopted by the convention. A justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1791-1817, he was appointed by President Washington as one of the commissioners to deliberate with the residents of the western counties in Pennsylvania in order to surpress the Whiskey Insurrection. He also published Reports of Cases in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania from 1791 to 1808 in four volumes.
Yeates died in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, March 14, 1817 and the inscription on his epitaph reads, "He fulfilled the duties of life with fidelity. His integrity was inflexible. As a judge he was most learned and eminent, and in the exercise of his public functions he deservedly obtained the confidence of his fellowcitizens [sic], and he left behind him a name which will only perish with the judicial records of his country."
Owned in the early twentieth century by Ward Brinton (b. 1873), the mate to this card table descended from Yeates' daughter, Mary (b. 1770) who married Charles Smith. Their daughter, Mary Margaret (1808-1869) and her husband, George Brinton were the grandparents of Ward Brinton. This table may have descended along the same lines and inherited or acquired by the family of the present owners in the early twentieth century. For further information on Yeates' life see John W. Jordan, ed., Colonial Families of Philadelphia (Lewis Publishing Co., 1911), vol. I., pp. 402-403.