AMERICAN, 1700-1730

Of exceptionally large size and with robust baluster turnings, this drop leaf table is a particularly impressive survival of American craftsmanship from the William and Mary era. The opposing baluster design of the turnings indicates the stylistic influence of Boston woodworkers. As postulated by Frances Gruber Safford, the city’s thriving chair-making industry may have dictated the production of symmetrical turnings that could be used for both legs and stretchers. Elsewhere in the colonies and in England makers of such tables generally used asymmetrical, single baluster designs (Frances Gruber Safford, American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 2007), p. 148). The presence of yellow pine rails, however, suggests that the table was made outside of the immediate Boston area. While no similar turnings from the region have been found, furniture makers working in the Connecticut River Valley during the early decades of the eighteenth century frequently used yellow pine as a secondary wood, and it is possible this table originates from central New England. Another possibility is Charleston, South Carolina. A gateleg table with yellow pine and cypress secondary woods that descended in the Laurens family of Charleston documents this turning profile in the American South (fig. 1). While the Laurens table has additional ball turnings at either end of each leg, the shaping of the baluster, ring and feet turnings are remarkably similar to those on the table offered here. As discussed by Luke Beckerdite, the Laurens table was probably made by a craftsman who had trained in the Boston area. Working at least ten years in Boston before moving to Charleston in 1733, Charles Warham (1701-1779) stands as one craftsman who may have transmitted New England designs to the South (Luke Beckerdite, "Religion, Artisanry, and Cultural Identity: The Huguenot Experience in South Carolina, 1680-1725," American Furniture 1997, Luke Beckerdite, ed. (Milwaukee, 1997), pp. 217-218, 226 (fn. 34), fig. 41; see also, Bradford L. Rauschenberg and John Bivins, Jr., The Furniture of Charleston 1680-1820, vol. I (Old Salem, 2003), pp. 40-41, fig. E-7, E-7a).