BOSTON, 1740-1760

Illustrating the rare turret-top form, this tea table with its pad feet is the only known American example of the design made in the Queen Anne style. Only five other turret-top tea tables displaying the same distinctive scalloping to the rails are known, all of which are in museum collections. These comprise two examples at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and further examples at Winterthur Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Historic Deerfield, Inc. All the related examples have claw-and-ball feet and two have carved ornament on the knees, features associated with the Chippendale era. They also all have turrets at the corners and along the short end rails, whereas this table lacks corner turrets, its short end rails are bowed and it is the only example with slides. As discussed by Nancy Richards and Nancy Goyne Evans, the turret-top tea table was an innovation of Boston craftsmen who combined the rounded corners of turret-top card tables with the shaping seen on scallop-top tripod tea tables. As the few survivals indicate, their production was limited to Boston and with costly ornament, were made in small numbers (Nancy E. Richards and Nancy Goyne Evans, New England Furniture at Winterthur: Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods (Winterthur, Delaware, 1997), p. 236; a sixth example of the form is known, but its authenticity has been questioned, see Helen Comstock, "The Collection of Dr. William S. Serri," The Magazine Antiques (March 1957), p. 258, fig. 17).

This table is distinguished by its descent in the Bromfield family of Boston. It was sold at auction in 1990 by the same family who consigned a tall-case clock with carving attributed to John Welch and bearing labels describing the clock's history of descent from Col. Henry Bromfield (1727-1820) (fig. 1) of Boston. Made around the same time in Boston, this tea table was also probably first owned by Henry Bromfield. The son of Edward Bromfield (1695-1756), a merchant, and Abigail Coney (1700-1779), Henry Bromfield followed in his father's footsteps and became one of eighteenth-century Boston's most successful and prominent figures. In 1749, he married Margaret Fayerweather (1732-1761), and their marriage may have occasioned the commission of a renowned set of chairs also carved by Welch. Upon the death of his wife, Bromfield remarried Hannah Clarke (1734-1785), the daughter of Richard Clarke (1711-1795), a part owner of the consignment of tea thrown into Boston harbor during the Boston Tea Party. In 1777, he removed permanently to his estate in Harvard, an opulent mansion furnished to the "height of luxury" as described by an 1894 account and like the tall-case clock, this tea table may have remained in this house through most of the nineteenth century (the Bromfield tall-case clock is now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago; see Sotheby's, New York, 27-28 June 1990, lot 369 and Alan Miller, "Roman Gusto in New England: An Eighteenth Century Boston Furniture Designer and His Shop," American Furniture 1993, Luke Beckerdite, ed. (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1993), p. 180, fig. 27; for the set of Bromfield chairs, see Leigh Keno, Joan Barzilay Freund and Alan Miller, "'The Very Pink of the Mode': Boston Georgian Chairs, Their Export, and Their Influence," American Furniture 1996, Luke Beckerdite, ed. (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1996), pp. 279-280, figs. 16, 17; Henry S. Nourse, History of the Town of Harvard, Massachusetts, 1732-1893 (Harvard, Massachusetts, 1894), pp. 132-136); other furniture believed to have been owned by Henry Bromfield includes a Boston easy chair and Newport card table attributed to John Goddard, both at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (see Morrison H. Heckscher, American Furniture: The Queen Anne and Chippendale Styles (New York, 1985), pp. 126-127, 165-167, cats. 74, 99).