ATTRIBUTED TO JOHN HENRY BELTER (1804-1863), NEW YORK, 1850-1860

This highly ornate center table exhibits many of the features that define Belter furniture: a frame with seven laminations, an elaborately pierced and carved frieze, and a central stretcher finial carved with fruits, nuts and flowers. Throughout, the table exhibits Belter's meticulous craftsmanship and in form and design, is closely related to an example at the Newark Museum bearing Belter's label (Eileen and Richard Dubrow, American Furniture of the 19th Century, 1840-1880 (Exton, PA, 1983), p. 133). This table relates to a group of figural-carved furniture attributed to Belter that exhibits many of the same decorative elements. Reflecting the era's fascination with the historical and literary past, Belter incorporated images of figures ranging from Shakespeare and Chaucer to George Washington into the crests of seating furniture and the skirts of tables. With distinctive forelocks, aged features and full beards, the busts on this table may represent the Greek poet, Homer. For a large suite of seating furniture with related busts now at Winterthur Museum, see Marvin D. Schwartz et al., The Furniture of John Henry Belter and the Rococo Revival (New York, 1981), pp. 48-49, 60, 66, figs. 13-16, 34, 41-42.

George H. Babcock (1832-1893) was a mechanical engineer and inventor who founded the firm Babcock & Wilcox in central New Jersey. His company was the first to manufacture water-tube boilers on a large scale. Babcock is believed to have been a collector, having loaned a painting by Alfred Wordsworth Thompson (American,1840-1896) to the 1893 World's Columbian exposition in Chicago. In the 1930s, the Babcock estate in Plainfield, New Jersey was purchased by Charles A. Higgins (1888-1943) and both the home and table have since descended in the Higgins family.