Queen Anne Carved Mahogany Slab Table

Object Details

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Federal Cherry Musical Tall Case Clock

Harland, Thomas
1776

wood; cherry; eastern white pine; chestnut

Object Essay

In the course of the 1740s, marble slab tables began to appear with greater frequency among the parlor and dining room furnishings of affluent Boston-area homes. Contemporary inventory references to “1 marble slab and table,” “1 marble table with mahogany frame,” and “1 marble sideboard and frame” in a parlor indicate that the stout wooden frames and their marble tops tended to be perceived separately, just as they were assembled and carved by more than one craftsman.^{1_{These and other inventory references to marble slab tables are recorded in Lockwood, 111. This table is published in Sack 1987, 169.}} Whether as an impermeable surface from which to serve hot food and beverages, or as imposing tables to stand between parlor windows or in spacious entrance hallways, marble slab tables were both useful and ornamental pieces of furniture.

This table is particularly decorative and its engraved top is most unusual, depicting Ceres, the goddess of summer. The design probably derives from a 17th- or 18th-century Continental engraving, or perhaps from embroidered textiles inspired by a common source.^{2_{See, for example, Springer, figs. 3, 10. The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Georgia Barnhill, American Antiquarian Society; Elaine Evans Dee, Cooper-Hewitt Museum; and Roberta Waddell, New York Public Library.}} The marble top has been broken and repaired. The mate to this table, in the Jeremiah Lee Mansion (Marblehead Historical Society, Marblehead, Massachusetts), depicts winter, and it is tempting to speculate on the existence of two other tables that would complete the four seasons, also a popular theme for the spandrels of clock dials (see Acc. No. 63.10).^{3_{The author wishes to thank Mrs. John P. Hunt, Executive Secretary, Marblehead Historical Society, for her help in this research. The Lee Mansion table is illustrated in Mabel Munson Swan, “American Slab Tables,” Antiques 63, no. 1 (January 1953), 40–44.}} The mate to this table is thought possibly to have belonged to John Pedrick, First Clerk of the Marblehead Bank, which occupied the Lee Mansion for nearly a century. Although the donor of the Collection’s table knows of no family connection to Pedrick, the compatible decoration of these two tables suggests that they were conceived as a pair.

A closely related table at Colonial Williamsburg and others with shaped marble tops and similarly carved shells have been attributed to Massachusetts, although their general resemblance to a slab table signed by John Goddard of Newport in 1755 recalls the close stylistic links between Newport and some Essex County furniture.^{4_{The Williamsburg table is discussed in Greenlaw, no. 144; and a related table is illustrated in an advertisement, David Stockwell, West Chester, Pa., Antiques 39, no. 2 (February 1941), 62. For the Goddard table see Ott, no. 40; and for stylistic links between Essex County and Newport, see Lovell, 118.}} Such rich furnishings were plentiful in pre-Revolutionary Marblehead, where Jeremiah Lee and Robert Hooper built some of the most architecturally ambitious houses in New England, furnishing them accordingly. 

Thomas S. Michie

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.