Card table

Date1795-1800

OriginAmerica, Virginia, Frederick County

MediumCherry and yellow pine.

DimensionsOH. 30; OW. 33 3/4; OD. (open) 33 1/2; OD. (closed) 16 3/4.

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1987-725

DescriptionAppearance: rectangular single-leaf card table with single drawer and four tapered legs on spade feet.

Construction: A hollow molding with beaded edges is run on the front and side edges of the upper and lower leaves. Both leaves are of single-board construction, and the lower leaf is attached to the frame with four original screws, two through wells in the inner rear rail and two through the front rail above the drawer. The inner rear rail is dovetailed to the left side rail and flush-nailed and glued to the fixed hinge rail without gaps or spacers. The fixed hinged rail is tenoned into the right rear leg. Pairs of thin vertical glue blocks reinforce the joints between the front legs and the adjacent rails. The swing hinge rail pivots on a finger joint, and the swing leg overlaps the left side rail when closed. An early and probably original leather pad glued to the inner rear rail acts as a drawer stop. The drawer is supported on two rabbeted runners that are tenoned into the front and inner rear rails. The front and side edges of the drawer bottom are beveled and rest in a groove; the rear edge is flush-nailed to the drawer back. A cock bead is glued to the drawer front, and an astragal bead is glued and nailed to the lower edge of the front rail. The spade feet are integral with the legs.

Materials: Cherry leaves, front rail, side rails, hinge rails, astragal bead, legs, drawer front, and cock bead; yellow pine inner rear rail, glue blocks, drawer sides, drawer back, drawer bottom, and drawer runners; leather drawer stop.
Label TextAs in the North, cabinet wares produced in the smaller towns and rural districts of the southern backcountry were sometimes strongly influenced by furniture made in urban centers along the coast. Any number of fashionable eastern details might be incorporated into the decoration of an upcountry chair or table; its proportions and wood content often reflected its provincial origin, however. Such is the case with this Winchester, Virginia, card table. Featuring a rectilinear form, large feet, wide drawer, overlapping swing leg, and astragal-molded front rail, the table resembles several Philadelphia and Annapolis examples made at the end of the colonial period. The connection with eastern Maryland is especially evident in the odd blocklike nature of the spade feet, variations of which appear on documented furniture by Annapolis cabinetmaker John Shaw. A Baltimore influence may also be present since the concave, or "hollow" molded, leaf edges were a feature of neoclassical tables made there.

There is little evidence of trade between Annapolis and Winchester in the late eighteenth century, although Baltimore enjoyed strong business ties to the northern Valley of Virginia throughout the early national period. Philadelphia likewise played an important part in the extensive Shenandoah grain trade. The basic design for this table may thus have been transferred to the Winchester area by furniture makers from eastern Pennsylvania or eastern Maryland who, like other artisans from those districts, were drawn into the Valley via strong commercial ties with their home cities.

The CWF table was originally owned by David (1757-1822) and Mary Hollingsworth Lupton (1758-1814), Quaker farmers who built a large stone house called Cherry Row near Winchester in 1794. The as yet unidentified maker of the card table also constructed two high chests of drawers and a desk and bookcase for the Luptons (CWF accessions 1973-206, 1973-325, and 1930-68) and possibly several built-in corner cupboards, or "bowfats," that remain at Cherry Row. (The same artisan also made corner cupboard 1973-197.) Family tradition holds these objects to be the products of an itinerant artisan who worked briefly on the Cherry Row farm before moving on, but the level of sophistication evident in the furniture and the wide array of tools that would have been necessary for its production suggest that the unnamed craftsman actually worked in an established shop. During the 1790s, Winchester was an important inland market center with a population of more than sixteen hundred people. Documents record the presence of at least six cabinetmakers in the area during that decade alone.

InscribedTwo mid-twentieth-century gummed labels on the inner rear rail read "Card table made by Cabinet maker / who came to David Lupton's home / on Apple Pie Ridge 1796." and "For Pavey Lupton Hoke, David / Lupton's great great grand / daughter." There are illegible pencil scribblings on the bottom and back of the drawer.
MarkingsNone.
ProvenanceThe table descended from David and Mary Hollingsworth Lupton of Cherry Row, Frederick Co., Va., to their son Jonah Lupton (1795-1870); to his son or grandson, Hugh Lupton (1845-1919); to his daughter, Caroline Lupton Bond (1883-1975), who sold it to Norma Mulvey Hoke in 1968. Mrs. Hoke bequeathed the table to her daughter-in-law, Charlotte Pavey Lupton Hoke, from whom it was acquired by CWF in 1987.