With its shaped and molded piecrust top, tapering cylinder on flattened ball pedestal and elongated robust ball-and-claw feet, this table demonstrates the standard in regional characteristics of Philadelphia circular-top tea tables. It also represents an important departure from that group, however, in its finely carved spiral fluted pillar. The majority of documented Philadelphia forms of this type share parallel vertical pillar fluting, with spiral carving generally found on New England objects, and of those, it is generally restricted to the ball or urn of circular topped-tripod based forms. The few examples from the period that have spiral-carved pillars are in the form of a beaded double-helix and are from Salem, Massachusetts, including a firescreen made for Elias Haskett Derby (illustrated in American Antiques from the Israel Sack Collection, Vol. V, Brochure 26, p. 1119, P4029) and a related candlestand (also illustrated in American Antiques, Vol. V, Brochure 26, p. 1261, P4095). In each of these examples, the pillar was probably carved on a pole-lathe and finished with a rasp and files, a different process from that which produced the spiral flute of the Philadelphia example. Although the pedestal carving of this tea table does not appear to relate to any other known examples, the C-scroll and leaf-carved knees, as well as their notched underside, do appear to relate to a tilt-top piecrust table illustrated in Hornor, Blue Book Philadelphia Furniture, (Washington, D.C., 1935, rpt. 1977), pl. 215, suggesting the possibility of a common origin.