VIRGINIA OR MARYLAND, 1755-1780

A rare survival of an eighteenth-century scallop-top tea table made south of Pennsylvania, this table displays unusual top construction that is also seen on two examples attributed to Norfolk, Virginia. The hollowing out of the top is carved from the solid rather than placed on a lathe and turned, the practice used for the vast majority of tables of this form. The same treatment is seen on a tea table with a history of descent in the Barraud family of Norfolk, Virginia and now in the collections of Colonial Williamsburg (acc. no. 1930-184) and another in the collections of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts. Unlike these forms, however, the table offered here lacks a birdcage support and displays a more attenuated turned baluster pedestal while the inverted bell-shaped element at the top of the pedestal is particularly distinctive with no known parallels. The well-executed feet suggest the work of a craftsman familiar with Philadelphia practices and the table may have been made in the broad Potomac River Valley region just to the south in Maryland and Virginia.