Those tables of theatrical gorgeousness with which the nouveaux-riches like to disfigure their drawing-rooms, all Veneered with stained woods of every flaming color and table-tops of Florentine mosaic…they are not furniture, but display. Moreover, they are generally ugly and tasteless, and have nothing to recommend them but their extravagant cost.
—Russell Sturgis, Jr., 1863
Russell Sturgis believed that excessive displays of wealth showed bad taste. He thought that furniture in the late Neoclassical style flaunted expensive-looking materials only to be ostentatious rather than to create a coherent design. The center table seen here, for instance, has animal feet painted green to resemble aged bronze, cast-metal decoration gilt to look like gold, and a marble top shipped from Italy made to look like ancient mosaic. Sold in the shop of French immigrant and cabinetmaker Anthony Quervelle, this center table and others like it were copied for decades and installed in drawing rooms and parlors across the ever-expanding United States. Russell Sturgis wrote this criticism of “Florentine mosaic” center tables in a New York magazine called The New Path published by the Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art. This group believed that artists and designers should not rely on established conventions but, rather, should create their own individual beauty through close imitation of nature.