Images(6)

Dining table

Date1750-1770

Attributed to Anthony Hay

Attributed to Benjamin Bucktrout (d. 1813)

Attributed to Edmund Dickinson

Attributed to Wiltshire

OriginAmerica, Virginia, Williamsburg

MediumMahogany, beech, and yellow pine (by microanalysis).

DimensionsOH. 29; OW. (open) 60 7/8; OW. (closed) 20 5/8; OD. 60 in.

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1993-97

DescriptionAppearance: Round, drop-leaf dining table on four straight turned legs with pad feet.

Construction: Original dome-head screws set in wells secure the frame to the top. The rule-joined leaves are suspended from iron hinges, each of which is held in place with two hand-filed screws rather than the more common three, suggesting the maker's interest in economizing. The fixed hinge rails are wrought-nailed to the inner rails, which in turn are tenoned into the stationary legs. Dovetails join the two corners of the frame adjacent to the swing legs. A full-height medial rail is dovetailed to the inner rails. The hinge rails rotate on round knuckle joints. Brass casters are screwed to the bottom of the feet.

Materials: Mahogany top, leaves, end rails, and legs; beech hinge rails; yellow pine (by microanalysis) inner rails and medial rail.
Label TextDining tables with straight-turned legs and pad feet like this example were popular in many of the furniture-making centers of Great Britain. Rarely made in America's northern colonies, they were widely produced in the lower Chesapeake, illustrating the close ties between British cabinetmaking traditions and those of early Virginia. Although the legs on these tables resemble the hand-shaped models on many other southern tables, they were actually formed by a relatively complex process of double-axis lathe turning. The square-to-round transition at the upper stile is much more subtle on the hand-shaped legs.

The turned feet on the table are distinguished from many other Virginia examples by their wide pads and inverted trumpet-shaped disks, a form directly associated with the cabinetmaking traditions of Williamsburg. Closely related feet are found on a series of card, sideboard, and tea tables thought to have been made during the third quarter of the eighteenth century in the Williamsburg shop of Anthony Hay (d. 1770) and his successors at the same site, Benjamin Bucktrout (d. 1813) and Edmund Dickinson (d. 1778) (see accession 1979-302). A similar foot appears on an easy-chair leg discovered in archeological investigations of their shop site, while a table leg unearthed in the same area shows clear structural and stylistic ties to the legs on the present table. The massive unfinished foot on the archeological leg is the sort from which high, wide pad feet like those seen here could have been turned.

Surviving in remarkably good condition, this table retains its original brass casters, a rarity today. Flush-screwed to the bottom of the pad feet, the casters and the table's hinged drop leaves reflect the eighteenth-century taste for furniture that could be easily moved from room to room as needed or folded and placed against a wall when not in use. Another noteworthy feature of the table is the wrought-iron butt hinges, each stamped with the initials "R.F." “R.F.” hinges also appear on dining tables from other Tidewater shops. Although possibly of British origin, these hinges may well represent the hand of a Virginia blacksmith, several of whom bore the same initials. The most likely candidate is Robert Froggett, whose prolific career in the major ironworking center of Fredericksburg-Falmouth spanned three decades beginning in the 1740s.
InscribedNone.
MarkingsIron butt hinges stamped "R.F."
ProvenanceThe earliest known owners of the table were Amanda Frances Bland (1825-1882) and her husband, Philip Fisher Mason (1802-1869), of King and Queen Co., VA. The table descended to their daughter and son-in-law, Roseanne Fisher Mason and Miles Henry Booker of adjacent Gloucester Co., thence to their daughter, Victoria Booker Sadler (1877-1966) of Middlesex Co. Antiques dealer Gerald L. Ballentyne purchased the table at the 1988 auction of the Sadler estate and sold it to CWF in 1993.