China Table

Date1765-1775

MediumAll components are of mahogany.

DimensionsOH: 30 1/8" OW: 36 3/8" OD: 23 5/16"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase, Mrs. William C. Schoettle

Object number1980-95

DescriptionAPPEARANCE: rectangular top with astragal molded edge; sawn interlacing guilloche fretwork gallery with astragal molded top edge; four fretwork aprons with sawn and drilled foliated pattern; front and rear aprons feature fretwork pendants centering profile of a bird, that on rear side in blind profile, that on front with carved tail, feather, eye, and beak details; four legs, L-shaped in cross section, with sawn and drilled fretwork of rosettes and interlacing scrolls; each leg flanked by two sawn fretwork brackets incorporating C-scrolls.

CONSTRUCTION: The legs are not mitered, as on most British examples, but sawn from solid single boards. The rails and gallery are solid nonlaminated elements as well. The gallery is mitered at the corners and glued into a rabbet at the outer edges of the single-board top, which in turn is nailed to the frame through the rabbet. Vertical quarter-round mahogany blocks further support the gallery at its corners and an astragal molding is glued and nailed to the edges of the top. The rails are tenoned into the legs, and the knee brackets are glued and nailed to the legs and aprons without benefit of tenons.
Label TextIn explaining the use of china tables, Thomas Chippendale wrote in 1762 that they were intended "for holding each a Set of China, and may be used as Tea-Tables." With their fencelike fretwork galleries, china tables were admirably suited for the protection of costly tea wares. More important, they offered gentry householders an uncommonly elegant means of displaying tea china even when it was not in use, thus providing visitors with a visual reminder of the owner's taste, status, and social position.

China tables were relatively popular in Britain but were produced infrequently in the colonies. Most of the known American examples were manufactured in those urban centers where British influence on local cabinetmaking was particularly strong. One example is Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where at least eight ornate china tables with elaborate crossed stretchers were made during the third quarter of the eighteenth century. Portsmouth artisans were heavily influenced by the Boston cabinet trade until some shifted to a strikingly British furniture style in the 1760s and 1770s, a change probably caused by the arrival of a few British cabinetmakers about that time.

China tables were also made in Charleston, South Carolina, another center where British influence prevailed. Although no extant Charleston china tables have yet been identified, records of their production survive. In 1772, cabinetmaker Richard Magrath, who had recently arrived from London, advertised his ability to make a wide assortment of fashionable furniture forms including "China Tables." Thomas Elfe produced the form as well, offering tables with a variety of optional components. Elfe's accounts between 1768 and 1775 list everything from straightforward "China Tables" or a "china tea table" to a "China frett tea table" and "commode [i.e., serpentine] fret China Tables with castors." The Elfe accounts also acknowledge the inherent fragility of china tables since the artisan recorded mending and even replacing their fretwork galleries regularly.

British-oriented cabinetmakers in Williamsburg produced their share of china tables too. Eight tables are known, among them this well-preserved example that descended in the Lewis and Byrd families of nearby Gloucester County. Unlike most American china tables, this one and a related Williamsburg example now owned by the State Department have legs composed of open fretwork. The foliated fret pattern mirrors that used for the carved blind frets on the back of the Masonic Master's chair made for Lodge 6 in Williamsburg. This association, together with the table's local history, accounts for the Williamsburg attribution. The same fret pattern also appears in the richly carved aprons of several very different but no less remarkable Williamsburg china tables, including acc. 1991-431. The fret design was probably adapted from several patterns for fireplace fenders published in the 1764-1765 edition of HOUSEHOLD FURNITURE IN THE PRESENT TASTE. Even the birds in the front and rear aprons of the present table can be traced to this source.

One of the most puzzling aspects of china table production in colonial Tidewater Virginia is the intrinsically ornate nature of the form, which is at odds with the neat and plain taste that permeates most other eastern Virginia cabinet wares of the same date. There is no concrete explanation for the anomaly, although an intriguing connection may link Masonic chairs and china tables. Although the chairs were used in the meeting halls of an exclusive fraternal society and the tables were made for the parlors and drawing rooms of the wealthy elite, each form was nonetheless a central element in elaborate ceremonies--ritualized secret meetings on the one hand and ritualized social gatherings on the other. Perhaps their roles as symbolic focal points of important social ceremonies demanded high levels of ornamentation.

InscribedNone.
MarkingsNone.
ProvenanceThe table was known in the family of the last private owner as the "Lewis Table" and the "Susan Lewis Table." According to family tradition, it descended from Susan Lewis (b. 1782) and her husband, William Powell Byrd (b. 1776), of Whitehall, Gloucester Co., Va., through the family to Richard Corbin Byrd (b. 1837), to his daughter, Fanny Marshall Byrd (1869-1960), who bequeathed the table to her daughter, Katherine Corbin Waller (1899-1994), from whom the table was acquired by CWF in 1980.

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