Lot Essay
This table descended in the Beers family of New York City and was originally purchased by the prominent banker, Joseph Davis Beers and his wife Mary Chapman Beers to furnish their home on 17 State Street (see portraits illustrated above). Joseph Beers' banking house was located on Wall and Broad streets, which is the current site of the New York stock Exchange. The tables descended to their daughter, Eliza and her husband Lewis Curtis and then to their youngest son, Lewis Augur Curtis, Alice Desmond's grandfather. A copy of "The Beers Family" by Alice Curtis Desmond (New York History, vol. XX, No. 2, April 1939) will accompany the sale of the table.
The carved columnar supports with vase-and-ring turnings, the deep abacus base, and the waterleaf carved legs of this table are characteristices that epitomize the most elegant classical furniture made by New York City craftsmen. Often furniture made with this level of skill and with these particular decorative elements is attributed to either Duncan Phyfe, Charles-Honoré Lannuier or Michael Allison, any of whom may indeed be responsible for the craftsmanship of this table; the shape and carving of the columns, for example relate to the workshop of Phyfe and Allison, whereas the downswept legs with waterleaf carving that extends the length of each leg with a lack of reeding and the use of waterleaf brass castors are found on tables by Lannuier. There were, however, many talented cabinetmakers working in New York City at this time, any number of whom had access to printed sources and price books that outlined such designs, as well as to actual tables made by their competitiors, which if of a successful form, were often copied.
A nearly identical table labeled by Lannuier is illustrated in Edward Vason Jones, "Charles-Honoré Lannuier and Duncan Phyfe," in American Art Journal vol. IX, No. 1 (May, 1977): 4-14, fig. 12.
For an identical breakfast table in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, see, Lockwood, Colonial Furniture in America, vol. 2, (New York 1913), p. 237, pl. 785. See also Cornelius, Furniture Masterpieces of Duncan Phyfe, (New York 1923), pl. 38; McClelland, Duncan Phyfe and the English Regency, (New York 1939), pl. 127.
The carved columnar supports with vase-and-ring turnings, the deep abacus base, and the waterleaf carved legs of this table are characteristices that epitomize the most elegant classical furniture made by New York City craftsmen. Often furniture made with this level of skill and with these particular decorative elements is attributed to either Duncan Phyfe, Charles-Honoré Lannuier or Michael Allison, any of whom may indeed be responsible for the craftsmanship of this table; the shape and carving of the columns, for example relate to the workshop of Phyfe and Allison, whereas the downswept legs with waterleaf carving that extends the length of each leg with a lack of reeding and the use of waterleaf brass castors are found on tables by Lannuier. There were, however, many talented cabinetmakers working in New York City at this time, any number of whom had access to printed sources and price books that outlined such designs, as well as to actual tables made by their competitiors, which if of a successful form, were often copied.
A nearly identical table labeled by Lannuier is illustrated in Edward Vason Jones, "Charles-Honoré Lannuier and Duncan Phyfe," in American Art Journal vol. IX, No. 1 (May, 1977): 4-14, fig. 12.
For an identical breakfast table in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, see, Lockwood, Colonial Furniture in America, vol. 2, (New York 1913), p. 237, pl. 785. See also Cornelius, Furniture Masterpieces of Duncan Phyfe, (New York 1923), pl. 38; McClelland, Duncan Phyfe and the English Regency, (New York 1939), pl. 127.