Corner table

Date1799

OriginAmerica, North Carolina or Virginia

MediumCherry and yellow pine.

DimensionsOverall: 29 1/4 x 40 1/4 x 39 7/8in. (74.3 x 102.2 x 101.3cm)

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1966-226

DescriptionAppearance: Square corner table with single, rule-jointed leaf; plain aprons; and Marlboro legs.

Construction: Standard pinned mortise-and-tenon joinery is used on the rails and legs. The pins extend through the leg and both rails at the corner where the hinge rail is attached to the inner rail. The hinge rail rotates on a knuckle joint, and its fixed end is screwed to the inner rear rail from the inside. Steel screws set in wells also secure the frame to the top.

Materials: Cherry top, leaf, legs, outer rails, fixed and swing hinge rails, and pins; yellow pine inner rail.
Label TextThe corner table, so called because it could be stored in a corner when not in use, was both portable and multifunctional. Like other small tables with folding leaves, it served many functions--dining, tea drinking, writing, and gaming. Probate inventories and other records indicate that corner tables were used in both private settings and public buildings in the South. For example, in 1776 Nicholas Flood, a wealthy physician from Richmond County, Virginia, kept "2 Corner [Tables]" in his ornately furnished "Hall," or best room. Five years earlier, the common public dining room at Williamsburg's Raleigh Tavern contained "1 [Walnut] Corner Table," several large dining tables, and a set of ten chairs.

The corner table evolved in Britain early in the eighteenth century, and it was being produced in cabinet centers from the Chesapeake to the Carolina Low Country by the 1750s. The example shown here is attributed to eastern Virginia or adjacent northeastern North Carolina largely because of its extremely plain exterior, but it is difficult to determine whether the table was made in an urban center or a rural area. A variety of rural corner tables from the lower Chesapeake are known, among them a group with turned legs and pad feet ascribed to the Virginia counties of Surry, Sussex, and Isle of Wight (see MESDA acc. 2023-10). Urban examples are encountered less often, although evidence that they were manufactured survives. An entry in the daybook of Orange County, Virginia, journeyman cabinetmaker Robert Cockburn records that he "finisht a Corner Table" for Colonel James Madison on September 11, 1773.

The underside of this table's folding leaf is inscribed "March, 1799," probably an indication of its date of production. Its straight, untapered legs and complete absence of inlaid ornament are consistent with furniture made twenty-five to thirty years earlier. That it was instead made on the eve of the nineteenth century once again demonstrates the long-standing interest in decoratively restrained goods that is typical of the coastal South.

Despite their neat and plain designs, most southern corner tables are structurally complex. Due in part to the triangular form of the top, joinery with acute angles is required to secure the legs to the rails. The legs on the CWF table consequently exhibit five unequal sides when viewed in cross section. This unusual approach was intended to provide an outer surface on each leg that was parallel with the adjoining edge of the top whether the table was open or closed.

InscribedA chalk inscription under the folding leaf reads "March, 1799."
MarkingsNone.
ProvenanceHistory of ownership in the John W. Hanes family of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This eighteenth-century Moravian family was first known as "Hoehns". A conversation with Frank L. Horton of MESDA (5/19/92) revealed that much of the Hanes collection was purchased through a relative and dealer in Charlotte, who in turn purchased extensively from J. K. Beard, a prominent early twentieth-century dealer in southern decorative arts.