Images(2)

Sideboard Table

Date1735-1750

OriginAmerica, Maryland or Virginia, Coastal

MediumBlack walnut with white oak and yellow pine, all by microanalysis

DimensionsH: 34"; W: 54 1/8"; D: 26 3/8"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1930-9

DescriptionAppearance: rectangular sideboard table; white and gray marble top with thumbnail molding on all four sides; coved and beaded front and side rails; unmolded oak rear rail; four cabriole legs with carved (not turned) pad feet; cyma-shaped knee brackets on front and sides.

Construction: The front, rear, and side rails are tenoned into the legs. A large cove molding is glued and face-nailed to the surface of the front and side rails and extends over the tops of the legs to mitered corner joints at the front. A heavy bead is glued and nailed into a rabbet on the lower edge of the cove. The rear rail is left exposed. A medial rail is dovetailed into the upper surfaces of the front and rear rails, and each corner of the frame features a diagonal brace let into the rails in the same manner. All of these braces are secured with wrought nails driven from above. The (replaced) knee blocks are nailed to the legs and the bottom edges of the rails.

Materials: Black walnut legs, rail facings, and applied bead; white oak rails; yellow pine medial brace and diagonal corner braces; all by microanalysis.
Label Text"Slab table," "sideboard table," and "sideboard" were terms applied to tables like this one during the first three quarters of the eighteenth century. After about 1780, however, the word sideboard was generally reserved for a recently introduced furniture form that offered both a serving surface and a host of drawers and compartments for storing dining utensils and linens. The new, more versatile sideboard quickly gained acceptance in British and American households and the sideboard table began to fall from favor. Relatively few examples were made in America after about 1815.

Marble sideboard tables with deeply coved aprons and cabriole legs much like this one were made in American cabinet centers from New York to Charleston. Although individual decorative details vary from city to city, almost all tables of this general form exhibit precisely the same construction. In most cases, inner structural rails are tenoned into the legs, while the massive cove molding carries little or no weight and is merely glued and nailed to the outer faces of the inner rails. The cove moldings extend to the outside corners of the table frame, where they are mitered together to conceal the tops of the legs.

In the face of such widespread structural consistency, it can be difficult to determine the local origins of individual objects. The CWF table, which has delicate feet and legs, does not exhibit the comparatively enormous scale seen in tables of this form from New York and other coastal cities in the Middle Colonies. Its use of yellow pine instead of cypress secondary wood argues against production in Charleston, where yellow pine was little used at this early date. No late baroque furniture with this clean, almost Chinese, appearance has been attributed to eastern North Carolina. By process of elimination and in view of its secondary wood content, date, and probable urban origin, the table was likely made in a coastal Chesapeake town such as Norfolk, Williamsburg, or Annapolis. Further supporting this Chesapeake attribution is the nature of the table's pad feet, which were carved rather than turned on a lathe. The same technique was employed on several Williamsburg pieces. A more specific attribution must await the discovery of additional objects from the same shop.

InscribedNone.
MarkingsNone.
ProvenanceActing for CWF, antiques dealer Israel Sack purchased the table in 1930 from Rebecca LaPorte, an antiques dealer in Alexandria, Va. No prior history is known.