Dining table

Dateca. 1775

MediumMahogany top, leaves, end rails, hinge rails, and legs; yellow pine inner rails, glue blocks, and batten.

DimensionsOH. 28 3/8; OW. (open) 54; OW. (closed) 19 3/4; OD. 47 7/8.

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1954-238

DescriptionAppearance: Rectangular drop-leaf dining table with straight skirts, square legs with chamfered inner corners and 2 beaded outer corners. Two legs are fixed and two are hinged.

Construction: The two rule-joined leaves are attached to the frame with three iron butt hinges per side. The leaves and the top are all made of single boards, and the top is secured to the frame with screws set in wells in the rails. A single screw is driven into the top through a central batten that is dovetailed into the side rails. The hinge rails rotate on knuckle joints. The fixed hinge rails are screwed and glued to the inner rails, which in turn are affixed to the legs with traditional mortise-and-tenon joints.
Label TextThis dining table is typical of the simpler furniture in the public rooms of southern gentry houses. It was first owned by Mordecai Gist (1743-1792) of Baltimore County, Maryland, an affluent landowner and famed Revolutionary War figure. With four straight Marlborough legs, two stationary and two that pivot on hinged rails, the table parallels countless British and southern American examples produced about the same time. Features typical of such tables are the open mortises on the upper sections of its swing legs that overlap and support the frame, and the top that is secured to the rails with rectangular glue blocks, screws, and a batten dovetailed into the frame.

A set of Baltimore side and armchairs that was also owned by Gist (CWF accession 1953-567) are stylistically related to the table and probably were made by the same artisan. The legs on both the chairs and the table are adorned with simple ovolo beaded edges that appear to have been cut with the same molding plane. If so, the ensemble represents one of the few examples of a southern dining table surviving en suite with chairs by the same artisan.

The widespread popularity of "neat and plain" dining tables in the coastal South is well documented in surviving furniture orders. In 1757, George Washington sent a request to trading sources in London for "Two neat Mahagony Tables 4 1/2 feet square when spread." However, many southerners were willingly guided by current British taste. In 1772, Virginia planter Meriwether Skelton asked merchant John Norton of London to send "3 very Elegant square Mahogony dineing Tables with Carv'd frames if Carving is the taste at present, if not they may be made in any other way that is most genteal." By the 1770s, Philadelphia-trained artisans like Gerard Hopkins (1742-1800) were quite capable of providing "Tables with Carv'd frames" to their Baltimore clients. Some customers nevertheless continued to choose dining tables and other furniture forms in the neat and plain style.

InscribedNone.
MarkingsNone.
ProvenanceBy family tradition, the first owner of the table was Mordecai Gist (1743-1792) of Baltimore Co., Md., captain and later brigadier general of the Maryland Line during the American Revolution. The table descended to his son, Joshua Gist; to his nephew, Mordecai Gist; to his son, Robert Gist; and to his daughter, Harriet Gist Smith, who sold it to CWF in 1954.