Chippendale Carved Mahogany Rectangular Tea Table

Object Details

Object Essay

Distinctive furniture for both serving and drinking tea began to appear in England and the American colonies shortly after the introduction of tea to the West in the late 17th century. The rectangular tea table evolved from the rectangular tea trays or tea boards that were almost as much a part of tea drinking as cups and saucers. Tea tables of this shape were made in New York throughout the colonial period, although not in the numbers enjoyed by the less expensive and more versatile circular-top tea tables. The earliest example known in New York is an elegant, rectangular mahogany table in the William and Mary style, now at Winterthur.^{1_{Fitzgerald 1982, fig. 11–2. For another, see Blackburn 1981, 1130.}}

During the heyday of Thomas Chippendale’s influence in America, New Yorkers ordered rectangular tea tables with several variations. The best examples are highly carved and enriched with galleries of delicate open fretwork.^{2_{Examples with galleries are illustrated in Downs 1952, no. 315; advertisement, Antiques 10 (February 1975), 196; and Parke-Bernet, New York, Sale 805, November 9, 1946, Lot 138, which is missing the gallery.}} Chippendale called such pieces china tables and described them as “holding each a Set of China, and may be used as Tea-Tables.”^{3_{Chippendale, pl. LI.}} Slightly less expensive, but still high-style, tea tables were made with both flat tops and molded raised edges.^{4_{For examples of high-style New York tea tables showing all three variations, see Hummel 1976, figs. 35, 36, and 37.}}

This tea table has the elements of furniture made by a sophisticated New York City cabinetmaker, yet the execution of both the gadrooning and the leaf carving is flat and stiff, with little three-dimensional articulation. The table is probably the product of a craftsman familiar with urban styles but less experienced in carving. Furthermore, the replication of gadrooning on the topmost molding is unique to New York furniture and suggests the sort of multiple enrichment that often typifies the decoration of rural furniture.

Unfortunately, the table has no early history. Even without a first initial, however, the name “Brush,” written on the underside of the top, lends support to a nonurban area of manufacture. All the Brushes listed in the 1790 New York census descend from Thomas or Richard Brush, two brothers or cousins who settled in Huntington, Long Island, about 1650 and 1658, respectively.^{5_{Conklin Mann, “Thomas and Richard Brush of Huntington, Long Island,” in Genealogies of Long Island Families (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1987), 1: 174–276.}} Their descendants remained around Huntington throughout the 18th century and became a large heterogeneous family, a mixture of farmers, merchants, craftsmen, sailors, and a few ne’er-do-wells.

Aside from the work of Dean Failey and Charles Hummel on Long Island furniture, very little quantitative research has been published about furniture made around New York City.^{6_{See Failey et al.; and Hummel 1968.}} The Brush table demonstrates a distinctive sense of individual design in its balancing of two gadrooned moldings, as well as the limited abilities of nonurban cabinet shops. As such, it reflects high-style New York taste adapted to the preferences of a smaller community.

Gilbert Tapley Vincent

Excerpted from Clement E. Conger, et al. Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1991.