NEW YORK, 1760-1780

This table exemplifies the best of the Type 1, "Van Rensselaer" tables as identified by Morrison Heckscher (Antiques, May, 1973, p. 974-983). The deeply shaped skirt, bold gadrooning, and partially carved rear knees as well as carved front knees distinguish this group. A very closely related table that descended in the Van Rensselaer family (and from which the group was named) is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (see Heckscher, American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1985) cat. no. 102). These tables share basic construction, and both have deeply carved knees with "striated C-scroll" carving (Heckscher, Antiques, p. 976). They deviate in that this table is not fitted with a hidden drawer in the skirt, and the top is attached from the top down, in keeping with "Beekman" type tables.

The early history of this table is not known, but it appears to be the same table that was advertised by Ginsberg & Levy in The Magazine Antiques in June, 1945 (p. 317). This firm specialized in the form, and supplied two related examples now at the Metropolitan Museum, in 1937 and in 1947. Caroline Clendenin Ryan Foulke likely purchased the table soon after the advertisement, as she was buying in the 1940s and 1950s.