SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS, CIRCA 1810

With elaborate veneers and elegant form, this work table demonstrates the refinement of Salem cabinetmakers in the early years of the nineteenth century. The turned legs, with plain capitals, tapering reeded columns and ring-turned and swelled feet, are distinctive and appear on the work of several Salem craftsmen. This suggests that the design was executed by a specialist turner who supplied the town’s woodworkers. Forms with legs of the same design include a suite of wedding furniture made in 1809 by William Hook (1777-1867), an 1809-1810 card table documented to Nehemiah Adams (1769-1840), a drawing table by Thomas Needham (w.1811-1858), all of Salem, and an 1809 desk-and-bookcase by Cotton Bennett (1786-1859) of Beverly. One turner known to have supplied parts for all these cabinetmakers was Joseph True (1785-1873), who established his shop in Salem in 1809, around the time these turnings appear on Salem-made furniture (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, acc. nos. 39.555, 39.556, 55.379; Margaret Burke Clunie, “Joseph True and the piecework system in Salem,” The Magazine Antiques (May 1977), pp. 1006-1011, pl, I, figs. 5-7). For a virtually identical table at Winterthur Museum see Charles Montgomery, American Furniture: The Federal Period (New York, 1966), pp. 406-407, no. 405.

Consigned by a Hooper-family descendant, this table has remained in the family for which it was made. Its ownership can be traced to Samuel Hooper (1808-1875) and it is likely that it was commissioned by his parents, John Hooper (1776-1854) and Eunice (Hooper) Hooper (1781-1866) of Marblehead and Boston. In 1802-3, John Hooper built a Federal mansion in Marblehead, which still stands at 187 Washington Street, sideways to the street and just three doors down from the house of his father, Robert Hooper (1741-1814). Noted to have been a man of “great business energy and shrewdness,” John was also exceptionally prosperous. He was President of the Marblehead Bank for many years and served as a representative to the General Court from 1819 to 1821. In 1799, John had married his cousin Eunice Hooper (1781-1866) and her circa 1790 sampler and elegant Empire satin wedding dress survive today (Charles Henry Pope, Hooper Genealogy (Boston, 1908); pp. 136-137; Harold B. Nelson, “Collecting American Samplers in Southern California,” The Magazine Antiques (May/June 2013), p. 145. Eunice’s wedding dress is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, acc. no. 48.1198a-b). For a high chest inherited by John from his father, see Christie’s, New York, 11 December 2014, lot 16.