1. David L. Barquist, American Tables and Looking Glasses in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1992), p. 118. 2. Victor Chinnery, Oak Furniture: The British Tradition (Suffolk, Eng.: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1979), pp. 301–3. 3. Barquist, American Tables and Looking Glasses, p. 118. Gerald W. R. Ward, “The Intersections of Life, Tables and Their Social Role,” in Barquist, American Tables and Looking Glasses, pp. 21–24. For the importance of the oval shape in baroque architecture and decoration, see Phillip M. Johnston, “The William and Mary Style in America,” in Reinier Baarsen et al., Courts and Colonies, The William and Mary Style in Holland, England, and America (New York: Cooper-Hewitt Museum, 1988), pp. 72–74. 4. Barquist, American Tables and Looking Glasses, p. 118, states that oval tables with falling leaves “can usually be distinguished from smaller tables with stationary oval tops by their value and the presence of large sets of chairs used with them.” 5. Two heavy rectangular tables, one with a trestle base and the other with a stretcher base, both possibly from New York, are illustrated in Dean F. Failey, Long Island is My Nation, the Decorative Arts and Craftsmen, 1640–1830 (Setauket, N.Y.: Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities, 1976), p. 27. The Dutch draw table in figure 1 and a second one illustrated in “In the Museums,” Antiques 71, no. 1 (January 1957): 68, are the only two known examples of this form believed to have been made or used in New York. Michael Kammen, Colonial New York (Millwood, N.Y.: KTO Press, 1978), pp. 73–74, 91. Kammen cites population figures as follows: in 1665, 1,470 persons (of 254 listed for taxation, only 16 had English surnames); by 1676, the city had grown to more than 2,200 persons (of 302 taxables, 115 seem to have been English). 6. Cornelis Steenwyck Inventory, July 29, 1686, New York State Court of Appeals, New York State Archives, Cultural Education Center, Albany. This collection has been microfilmed and is abstracted in Kenneth Scott and James A. Owre, Genealogical Data from Inventories of New York Estates 1666–1825 (New York: New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, 1970). The Phillipse family table is at the Old Dutch Church, North Tarrytown, New York, where it is still in use by the congregation. The January 7, 1730, will of Catherine Phillipse (1652–1730) of New York City reads: “I give and bequeath to my Son in Law Adolph Phillipse Esq. & to his heirs for Ever . . . a Long table In Trust to and for the Congregation of the Dutch Church Erected at Phillipseburgh by my late Husband Frederick Phillipse decd” (typescript copy, files of the Old Dutch Church). For the Schuyler inventory, see Ruth Piwonka, “New York Colonial Inventories: Dutch Interiors as a Measure of Cultural Change,” in Roderic H. Blackburn and Nancy A. Kelly, eds., New World Dutch Studies: Dutch Arts and Culture in Colonial America 1609–1776 (Albany, N.Y.: Albany Institute of History and Art, 1987), p. 73. Piwonka gives the best and most succinct summary of the problems and opportunities presented by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New York estate inventories, as well as a sampling of the few room-by-room ones available. 7. Cited in Roderic H. Blackburn and Ruth Piwonka, Remembrance of Patria: Dutch Arts and Culture in Colonial America, 1609–1776 (Albany, N.Y.: Albany Institute of History and Art, 1988), p. 186. 8. Chinnery, Oak Furniture: The British Tradition, p. 301, figs. 3: 202, 3: 211, 3: 213. The supporting rails on draw tables also run in tracks but differ from lopers in that they are fixed to the undersides of the leaves and taper in length (the thinnest part of the taper toward the ends of the table, the thickest toward the center). This taper causes the leaves to rise to the height of the fixed center section of the top as they are drawn out from under it. 9. Something analogous to this occurs in late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century New York tankards, which are an English form but have cut-card banding and meander ornaments that are more typically Dutch grafted onto them. For a discussion of the New York tankard as an Anglo-Dutch hybrid, see Gerald W. R. Ward, “The Dutch and English Traditions in American Silver,” in Francis J. Puig and Michael Conforti, eds., The American Craftsman and the European Tradition, 1620–1820 (Hanover, N.H.: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1989), p. 139. The ovolo-and-bead molding and the kasten on which it is found are illustrated and discussed in Peter M. Kenny, Frances Gruber Safford, and Gilbert T. Vincent, American Kasten: The Dutch-Style Cupboards of New York and New Jersey, 1650–1800 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991), pp. 12, 36–43. 10. A table with apron construction similar to the example shown in figure 11, but that appears to be the work of a different shop, is illustrated in Blackburn and Piwonka, Remembrance of Patria, p. 174. The remaining two tables with twisted legs, one with a history of ownership in the Elmendorf family of Hurley in Ulster County, New York, and the other originally owned in the Van Bergen, Bronck, or Houghtaling families of Greene County, New York, have half-inch-thick rectangular plaques nailed on the corners that obscure the apron joints. These appear to be an original treatment, perhaps intended to give the tables a stronger, more joinerly appearance. The Elmendorf table is illustrated in Antiques 83, no. 6 (August 1963): 165, where the applied corner plaque is barely visible behind one of the table leaves. This table is still in the possession of descendants of its original owner, as is the one with the Greene County history that has never been illustrated. These two tables probably come from the same shop. 11. Robert Trent suggests that broad central frames on oval tables with falling leaves may be an early feature that points to the genesis of the form when leaves were attached to massive rectangular tables of traditional style. For Trent’s comments, see American Furniture with Related Decorative Arts, 1630–1830: The Milwaukee Art Museum and The Layton Art Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1991), pp. 83–84. A square table with plain stretchers is also illustrated in the Milwaukee catalogue on p. 41. (Several others survive, including examples in the Nutting collection at the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Historical Society of Old Newbury, Newburyport, Massachusetts.) In the Milwaukee catalogue, Trent argues that the Milwaukee and the Metropolitan Museum square tables, both being made of maple, may date as late as 1710. The possibility has yet to be considered that any of these could have been made in New York. 12. The Van Cortlandt family table and the Sir William Johnson table are illustrated and discussed in Esther Singleton, The Furniture of Our Forefathers (New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1900), pp. 256–60. The Johnson table is also in Luke Vincent Lockwood, Colonial Furniture in America, 2 vols. (2d ed., New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921), 2:174–75. Wallace Nutting, Wallace Nutting General Catalog, Supreme Edition (1930; reprint, Exton, Pa.: Schiffer Limited, 1977) p. 104. The table at the Monmouth County Historical Association, an exceptionally small example, is illustrated in Antiques 118, no. 1 (January 1980): 180. 13. Lockwood, Colonial Furniture in America, 2:179–80. Wallace Nutting, Furniture Treasury (Framingham, Mass.: Old America Company, 1928), nos. 942, 943. For additional illustrations of tables with flat gates, see Norman F. Rice, New York Furniture Before 1840 (Albany, N.Y.: Albany Institute of History and Art, 1962), p. 37; Robert Bishop, American Furniture 1620–1720 (Dearborn, Mich.: Edison Institute, 1975), p. 10; Charles T. Lyle and Philip D. Zimmerman, “Furniture of the Monmouth County Historical Association,” Antiques 118, no. 1 (January 1980): 186; Charles T. Lyle, “Buildings of the Monmouth County Historical Association,” Antiques 118, no. 1 (January 1980): 184 (the four-legged table with flat gates shown here is now in a private collection); and Failey, Long Island is My Nation, p. 28. A few trestle-base tables with turned gate legs and low flat stretchers are known. One that was owned by Miss C. M. Travers of New York is illustrated in Lockwood, Colonial Furniture in America, 2:179. Another closely related example attributed to New York is at Winterthur (acc. 58.527). A “flat gate” with a trestle base said to have descended in some Norwalk, Connecticut, families was sold at Sotheby’s, Fine American Furniture, Folk Art, Folk Paintings and Silver, June 26, 1986, sale no. 5473, lot 112. 14. Piwonka, “New York Colonial Inventories,” pp. 74–76. Like Cornelis Steenwyck, Van Cortlandt appears to have preferred not to use an oval table with falling leaves in her front parlor or best room. The large oak table in this room may have been a considerably older one with an expandable draw top since there were eighteen “chairs” and one “elbo cain chair” in the room. The inventory is salted with references to “old” objects, the most interesting one being the “old Holland case” in the chamber over the back parlor. Apparently, Gertruy Van Cortlandt maintained a “Dutch” household to the very end. For an informative analysis and reconstruction of Dutch townhouses in The Netherlands and colonial New York based on period documents, see Henk J. Zantkuyl, “The Netherlands Town House: How and Why It Works,” in Blackburn and Kelly, eds., New World Dutch Studies, pp. 143–60. 15. Chinnery, Oak Furniture: The British Tradition, pp. 306–7. 16. Benno M. Forman, American Seating Furniture 1630–1730 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), p. 292. 17. A few New York oval tables with falling leaves exist with unique turnings, and more undoubtedly will surface in the future. The purpose of organizing the turning patterns into visually cohesive groups is to aid the reader in making comparisons and in discerning a distinct early baroque New York turning style. 18. Forman, American Seating Furniture, p. 290. Forman was the first to identify fat, full rings as a characteristic of New York early baroque turning on high-back leather chairs. The extra turned foot under the inner pivot leg of the auxiliary leg support, a typical New England feature, is seldom used. 19. Robert F. Trent, “17th-Century Upholstery in Massachussetts,” in Edward S. Cooke, Jr., ed., Upholstery in America & Europe from the Seventeenth Century to World War I (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987), p. 44, fig. 22. The Philadelphia board-seated chairs and the Philadelphia or New York leather chair are illustrated in Forman, American Seating Furniture, pp. 220–23. The two tables of possible New England origin are illustrated in Singleton, The Furniture of Our Forefathers, 1:200; and in Frances Clary Morse, Furniture of the Olden Time (New York: MacMillan Company, 1902), p. 220. The southern table is illustrated in Antiques 61, no. 1 (January 1952): 59. For the New York high chests, see Philip M. Johnston, “The William and Mary Style in America,” in Courts and Colonies, p. 64; John T. Kirk, American Furniture and the British Tradition (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), p. 190; and Joseph Downs and Ruth Ralston, A Loan Exhibition of New York State Furniture (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1934), no. 34. The dressing table is in a private collection. The entire process from layout to finishing for both single- and double-twisted legs is clearly explained in “Twist Turning, Traditional Method Combines Lathe and Carving,” Fine Woodworking 33 (March/April 1982): 92–95. For the continental European background of the single twist, see Forman, American Seating Furniture, p. 220; and Jan Veenendaal, Furniture from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India During the Dutch Period, trans. by R. Robson-McKillop (Delft: Volkenkundig Museum Nusantara, ca. 1985), p. 31. 20. For coastal South Carolina furniture with stacked baluster turnings, see E. Milby Burton, Charleston Furniture, 1700–1825 (Charleston: Charleston Museum, 1955), fig. 76 (a 1710–1720 stretcher table from Limrick plantation); and MESDA research file S-1273 (a 1710–1725 couch). The author thanks Luke Beckerdite for these references. The only table with turned gate legs that has stacked balusters is the Van Cortlandt family table (fig. 2). Two draw-bar tables with this turning are known: figure 9 and a table (private collection) once owned by the Knickerbacker family (phone conversation with Roderick Blackburn, January 1992). 21. For an armchair attributed to New York with the same turning under the arm, see Forman, American Seating Furniture, p. 288. 22. The Maine tables are illustrated and discussed in Brock Jobe and Myrna Kaye, New England Furniture: The Colonial Era (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984), pp. 270–71. 23. The trestle-base tables with this leg turning include one that descended in the Butler and Chichester families of Norwalk, Connecticut (Sotheby’s Fine American Furniture, Folk Art, Folk Paintings and Silver, sale no. 5473, lot 112) and another advertised by Fred J. Johnston in Maine Antiques Digest, August 1990. One of the walnut tables with turned gate legs was sold at Sotheby’s American Heritage Auction of Americana, January 30, 1982, sale no. 4785Y, lot no. 783 and subsequently offered for sale by John Walton, Inc., in Maine Antiques Digest, May 1983. The other is at the Van Cortlandt Mansion in Van Cortlandt Park, New York. Details of turned staircase balusters and a table leg from South Scituate and Marshfield, Massachusetts, are illustrated in Robert Blair St. George, The Wrought Covenant (Brockton, Mass.: Brockton Art Center/Fuller Memorial, 1979), pp. 41–42. For the Hempstead, Long Island, table, see Failey, Long Island is My Nation, p. 30. 24. The leather armchair is illustrated in Forman, American Seating Furniture, p. 290. For the trestle-base table related to the Winterthur example, see Lockwood, Colonial Furniture in America, 2:179. For the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, armchair and a discussion of opposed ogee baluster arm supports in New York leather chairs, see Forman, American Seating Furniture, pp. 289–90. The fourth New York trestle-base table with opposed baluster turnings is in the collection of the Monmouth County Historical Association in Freehold, New Jersey, and on display at Marlpit Hall in Middletown. This table also has a full fat ring as a linking device between the balusters. 25. In addition to the trestle-base table with the elongated balusters illustrated here (fig. 24), other examples are illustrated in Lyle and Zimmerman, “Furniture of the Monmouth County Historical Association,” p. 186; and in a Joseph Sprain advertisement in Antiques 106, no. 2 (August 1974): 161. The two classic “gate-legs” are illustrated in Thomas Smith Hopkins and Walter Scott Cox, Colonial Furniture of West New Jersey (Haddonfield, N.J.: Historical Society of Haddonfield, 1936), pp. 32–33 (it’s possible that it is a Philadelphia table), and in Christie’s Important American Furniture, Silver and Decorative Arts, June 2, 1983, sale no. 5370, lot 366. A fifth “flat gate” with four legs and low plain board stretchers is illustrated in situ in the Allen house, Shrewsberry, New Jersey, in Lyle, “Buildings of the Monmouth County Historical Society,” p. 184. The table with draw-bar supports was owned by Roger Gonzalez and Frank Cowan in 1994 as were two additional flat-gate tables with stretchers and elongated-baluster legs. 26. An English pad-foot dining table with falling leaves and additional half-rounds glued beneath the rule joints is shown in John T. Kirk, American Furniture and the British Tradition to 1830, p. 324. The drawer’s softly rounded top edges and mitered back corner joints are details that also appear on a New York City mahogany chest of drawers in the rococo style at the Brooklyn Museum (acc. 55.225) and on a fine New York City mahogany desk-and-bookcase in the same style at Winterthur, illustrated in Joseph Downs, American Furniture, Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods (New York: MacMillan Company, 1952), p. 224. I am grateful to Wade Lawrence for information on the Brooklyn Museum and Winterthur case furniture. For information on Sir William Johnson and his homes, see Kammen, Colonial New York, pp. 308–15, and Dumas Malone, ed., Dictionary of American Biography, 11 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1961), 5:124–28. 27. Susan Mackiewicz, “Woodworking Traditions in Newbury Massachussetts, 1635–1745,” M.A. thesis, University of Delaware, 1981. J. Stewart Johnson, “New York Cabinetmaking Prior to the Revolution,” M.A. thesis, University of Delaware, 1964, p. 87. The full table of prices is given in Irving W. Lyon, The Colonial Furniture of New England (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1891), pp. 265–66. 28. Museum of the City of New York, file for acc. 78.106. 29. The accounts between Joshua Delaplaine and Edward Burling list the purchase of numerous tools and hardware, including entries in 1730 and 1738 for dozens of “dovetails.” For the Delaplaine and Burling accounts, see Johnson, “New York Cabinetmaking Prior to the Revolution,” appendix F. 30. E. M. Ruttenber, Catalogue of Manuscripts and Relics in Washington’s Head-Quarters, New Burgh, N.Y., With Historical Sketch (Newburgh, N.Y.: E. M. Ruttenber & Son, 1882), no. 616. The 1882 catalogue was based on an 1872 inventory of the contents of the house. A catalogue dated 1858, in the archives of Washington’s Headquarters, lists the chairs but not the table. The author thanks Tom Hughes and Mel Johnson of Washington’s Headquarters for these references. Forman, American Seating Furniture, p. 311. Forman dates Boston carved-top leather chairs no later than 1723 based on the account books and letters of Boston upholsterer Thomas Fitch. The gift of the Dutch draw table (fig. 1) to the Dutch Reformed Church after it was used for a couple of generations by the Phillipse family is a pattern that may also hold true for the Verplanck table and chairs. 31. The names of these joiners are taken from The Burghers of New Amsterdam and the Free- men of New York 1675–1866, in Collections of the New-York Historical Society for the Year 1885 (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1886); and Indentures of Apprentices 1718–1727, in Collections of the New-York Historical Society for the Year 1909 (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1910). Johnson, “New York Cabinetmaking Prior to the Revolution,” appendices E–L and pp. 17–19. 32. In addition to the three Ulster County tables illustrated here, there are also examples with the same turning at the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee, Winterthur Museum (acc. 58.1028), and Senate House State Historic Site in Kingston, New York (acc. SH 1975.321). The Winterthur table reportedly descended in the Depuy-Schoonmaker family of Stone Ridge, Ulster County (phone conversation with Bob Slater of Fred J. Johnston Antiques [the firm that sold the table to H. F. du Pont], May 1989). The turnings on the sixth table (private collection, Kingston, N.Y.) feature well-defined reels surmounted by elongated balusters with short tapered columns above. This table was once the property of artist and designer Ivar Evers of New Paltz, and, like the table shown in figure 10, its short tapered columns are slightly convex, a reference to classically correct entasis. The seventh table has turnings comprised of a series of three compressed balusters surmounted by straight-sided, short tapered columns. This table, which was sold at the Copake Country Auction in 1986 (Antiques and the Arts Weekly, August 15, 1986), does not have a local Ulster County history, but its turnings are nearly identical to those on a desk-on-frame from the Kingston area illustrated in Blackburn and Piwonka, Remembrance of Patria, p. 178. The Elmendorf family table with twisted legs is illustrated in Antiques 83, no. 6 (August 1963): 165. 33. For more on the Elting-Beekman group of makers, see Kenny, Safford, and Vincent, American Kasten, pp. 23–26, 54–59 >