1. William McPherson Hornor, Jr., “A Study of American Piecrust Tables,” International Studio 99, no. 411 (November 1931), 38–40, 78–79; Christie’s, New York, January 25, 1986.
2. For a discussion of tables that change shape, see Peter Thornton, Seventeenth-Century Interior Decoration in England, France & Holland (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 226–30; and Adam Bowett, English Furniture, 1660–1714 From Charles II to Queen Anne (Woodbridge, Eng.: Antique Collectors’ Club, 2002), pp. 106–7.
3. Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982). Lorna Weatherill, Consumer Behavior and Material Culture in Britain, 1660–1760 (New York: Routledge, 1988), pp. 25–42. Lois Green Carr and Lorena S. Walsh, “Changing Lifestyles and Consumer Behavior in the Colonial Chesapeake,” in Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Cary Carson, Ronald HoVman, and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994), pp. 59–166. Gloria L. Main, “The Standard of Living in Southern New England, 1640–1773,” William and Mary Quarterly 45, no. 1 (January 1988), p. 127. Other recent volumes that address eighteenth-century consumerism include Consumption and the World of Goods, edited by John Brewer and Roy Porter (New York: Routledge, 1993); The Consumption of Culture, 1600–1800: Image, Object, Text, edited by Ann Bermingham and John Brewer (New York: Routledge, 1997); Richard Bushman, Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Vintage, 1992), p. 184.
4. Cary Carson, “The Consumer Revolution in British North America: Why Demand?,” in Of Consuming Interests, p. 486; Ann Smart Martin, “Makers, Buyers, and Users: Consumerism as a Material Culture Framework,” Winterthur Portfolio 28, nos. 2/3 (summer/autumn 1993), pp. 141–57.
5. Pennsylvania Gazette, March 15, 1733, Accessible Archives, item 1225. Unless otherwise noted, all further references to this newspaper are from Accessible Archives and only the date and item number will be cited. For a succinct discussion of politeness, see John Styles, “Georgian Britain, 1714–1837, Introduction,” in Design and the Decorative Arts, Britain 1500–1900, edited by Michael Snodin and John Styles (London: V&A Publications, 2001), p. 183. For a more in-depth discussion of politeness, see Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: The Development of Manners, translated by Edmund Jephcott (New York: Urizen Books, 1978). For histories of tea drinking in Britain and America, see William H. Ukers, All about Tea (New York: Tea and CoVee Trade Journal Company, 1935); William H. Ukers, The Romance of Tea: An Outline History of Tea and Tea-Drinking Through Sixteen Hundred Years (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936); and Rodris Roth, “Tea Drinking in 18th-Century America: Its Etiquette and Equipage,” in Material Life in America, 1600–1860, edited by Robert Blair St. George (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988), pp. 439–62.
6. Pennsylvania Gazette, April 18, 1771, item 48630; and May 25, 1769, item 44688.
7. David S. Shields, Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1997), pp. 99–140.
8. Carson, “The Consumer Revolution in British North America: Why Demand?,” pp. 586–92.
9. Roth, “Tea Drinking in 18th-Century America,” p. 447.
10. Thornton, Seventeenth-Century Decoration in England, France & Holland, pp. 229–30. See p. 229, fig. 216, for a Javaese laquer tea table mounted on a circa 1680 English base. Also see Bowett, English Furniture, p. 25. London chair maker Thomas Phil sold chairs with sawn cabriole legs, described as “frames of ye newest fashion,” to Edward Dryen of Canons Ashby in Northamptonshire in 1714 (see Nancy E. Richards and Nancy Goyne Evans, New England Furniture at Winterthur: Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods [Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Winterthur Museum, 1997], p. 27). Wallace B. Gusler was the first furniture scholar to suggest that the tea table illustrated in fig. 7 could be by Peter Scott. See Wallace B. Gusler, “The Tea Tables of Eastern Virginia,” Antiques 135, no. 5 (May 1989): 1247. A dining table with related feet reputedly came from Robert Carter’s house Corotomin, which burned in 1729 (the author thanks Luke Beckerdite for this information which is based on Carter family tradition). Bowett, English Furniture, p. 14. Ralph Edwards and Percy Macquoid, The Dictionary of English Furniture from the Middle Ages to the Late Georgian Period, 3 vols. (1924–1927; reprint and rev., London: Barra Books Ltd., 1983), 3:145–54. Ralph Edwards, The Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture from the Middle Ages to the Late Georgian Period (London: Country Life, Ltd., 1964), p. 528. For more on the possible Netherlandish influences on the development of the tilt-top tea table, see Thornton, Seventeenth-Century Decoration in England, France & Holland, p. 230; and Peter Thornton, Authentic Décor: The Domestic Interior, 1720–1920 (New York: Viking, 1984), p. 79, no. 95.
11. For a succinct discussion of English names for tilt-top tables, see Richards and Evans, New England Furniture at Winterthur, p. 274, nt. 1. For Uriell’s inventory, see card file, Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (hereafter cited MESDA), Winston-Salem, North Carolina. E. Milby Burton, Charleston Furniture, 1700–1825 (Narberth, Pa.: Livingston Publishing Company for the Charleston Museum, 1955), p. 49. Jack L. Lindsey, Worldly Goods: The Arts of Early Pennsylvania, 1680–1758 (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1999), p. 151. Among these unusual descriptors, English terms continued to appear in American records through the eighteenth century. The 1767 probate inventory of George Johnson of Fairfax County, Virginia, listed a “Moho Snap Table” valued at £1.1.0 (MESDA card file).
12. Kevin M. Sweeney, “Furniture and the Domestic Environment in Wethersfield, Connecticut, 1639–1800,” in St. George, ed., Material Life in America, 1600–1860, p. 277. Providence Price Agreement, 1757, Crawford Papers, Rhode Island Historical Society, reprinted in Michael Moses, Master Craftsmen of Newport (Tenafly, N.J.: MMI Americana Press, 1984), p. 357. 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. 233.
13. For early references to tea tables, see David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew NeV, American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1998), p. 36; and Barquist, American Tables and Looking Glasses, p. 90. The earliest known advertisement for “tea table ketches” appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1741 (Barquist, American Tables and Looking Glasses, p. 232; and William McPherson Hornor, Jr., Blue Book, Philadelphia Furniture, William Penn to George Washington, [Philadelphia: privately printed, 1935], p. 143).
14. The tea tables and stand shown in figures 9–11 are illustrated and discussed in Jack Lindsey, Worldly Goods, pp. 150–54, nos. 82, 83, 85, 99. Lindsey dated the earliest table (fig. 9) 1715–1735 and suggested that the faceted base block may be a transitional feature linking it stylistically to the stand (fig. 10) and tea table shown in figure 11. Although his proposal may be correct in this instance, faceted base blocks occur much later on furniture from Newport, Rhode Island. (See Antiques 94, no. 6 [December 1968]: 827; and Richards and Evans, New England Furniture, pp. 278–79, 287–88.) For more on the table illustrated in fig. 12, see Clement E. Conger and Alexandra W. Rollins, Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991), p. 81. Gusler, “The Tea Tables of Eastern Virginia,” pp. 1245–46; the example shown in fig. 9 of Gusler’s article is not of the period.
15. Evidence regarding this type of turning is scant because no seventeenth- or eighteenth-century encyclopedias illustrate the process. Craftsmen probably used a lathe attachment similar to the “Arbor & Cross for Turning Stands,” which survived in the workshop of the Dominy family of cabinetmakers in East Hampton, Long Island (see Charles F. Hummel, With Hammer in Hand [Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press for the Winterthur Museum, 1968], p. 90). Similar to modern day face-plates, the attachment had an iron cross with four holes for screws that engaged the stock. This allowed the workpiece to spin on a vertical plane. Many tabletops have four holes in the undersides measuring equal distances from the center point and from each other (see Patricia E. Kane, “The Palladian Style in Rhode Island Furniture: Fly Tea Tables,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite [Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 1999], pp. 14–15, nt. 8). Even tops without such holes may have been turned. Some craftsman may have glued the top to a board that was attached the cross. The author thanks Michael S. Podmaniczky for his insights on these processes.
16. Glenn Adamson, “The Politics of the Caned Chair,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2002), pp. 175–206. For more on caned chair makers trading chair parts, see Benno Forman, American Seating Furniture, 1630–1730, An Interpretive Catalog (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), pp. 248–49.
17. Pennsylvania Gazette, May 30, 1751, item 13033. J. Stewart Johnson, “New York Cabinetmaking prior to the Revolution” (master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1964), p. 28. Barquist, American Tables and Looking Glasses, pp. 232–23. “The Thomas Elfe Account Book,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 36, no. 2 (April 1936): 57, 61.
18. Pennsylvania Gazette, December 19, 1771, item 50175. Also see an earlier version of the same advertisement on May 15, 1766, item 37944. The Great River: Art and Society of the Connecticut Valley, 1635–1820, edited by Gerald W. R. Ward and William N. Hosley, Jr. (Hartford, Conn.: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1985), p. 226, nt. 3. For a discussion of how craftsmen negotiated their exchange relationships in individual social economies, see Edward S. Cooke, Jr., Making Furniture in Preindustrial America: The Social Economy of Newtown and Woodbury, Connecticut (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 5. For examples of the relationships between less specialized rural artisans in North Carolina, see John Bivins, Jr., The Furniture of Coastal North Carolina, 1700–1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for MESDA, 1985), pp. 60–63.
19. Helena Hayward and Pat Kirkham, William and John Linnell: Eighteenth-Century London Furniture Makers, 2 vols. (New York: Rizzoli International, 1980), 1:171. Nancy Ann Goyne, “Furniture Craftsmen in Philadelphia, 1760–1780. Their Role in Mercantile Society” (master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1963), p. 215.
20. Ward and Hosley eds., The Great River, pp. 225–26. Kane, “The Palladian Style in Rhode Island Furniture,” pp. 7–9. The author thanks Wallace Gusler for this information.
21. Benno M. Forman, “Delaware Valley ‘Crookt Foot’ and Slat-Back Chairs: The Fussell-Savery Connection,” Winterthur Portfolio 15, no. 1 (spring 1980): 46. For Savery labels, see Hornor, Blue Book, pls. 88–93. Pennsylvania Gazette, September 25, 1755, item 18764.
22. “The Thomas Elfe Account Book, 1765–1775,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, 36, no. 2 (April 1935): 57, 61. Luke Beckerdite, “Immigrant Carvers and the Development of the Rococo Style in New York, 1750–70,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 1996), pp. 246–47. Luke Beckerdite, “Philadelphia Carving Shops, Part III: Hercules Courtenay and His School,” Antiques 131, no. 5 (May 1987): 1046. Leroy Graves and Luke Beckerdite, “New Insights on John Cadwalader’s Commode-Seat Side Chairs,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2000), pp. 153–60.
23. Beckerdite, “Immigrant Carvers,” pp. 249–55.
24. The author thanks Alan Miller and Luke Beckerdite for the information on the table illustrated in figure 24. Luke Beckerdite, “Philadelphia Carving Shops, Part II: Bernard and Jugiez,” Antiques 128, no. 9 (September 1985): 505.
25. John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British North America, 1607– 1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1985), pp. 60–68, 268–69. Carson, “The Consumer Revolution in British North America: Why Demand?,” p. 617.
26. Ronald L. Hurst and Jonathan Prown, Southern Furniture 1680–1830, The Colonial Williamsburg Collection (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997), p. 318. Ronald L. Hurst, “Cabinetmakers and Related Tradesmen in Norfolk, Virginia, 1770–1820” (master’s thesis, College of William and Mary, 1989), pp. 10, 15. Margaretta M. Lovell, “‘Such Furniture as Will Be Most Profitable,’ The Business of Cabinetmaking in Eighteenth-Century Newport,” Winterthur Portfolio 26, no. 1 (spring 1991): 29–30. Hurst discusses the transfer of furniture-making traditions between American cities in “Cabinetmakers and Related Tradesmen in Norfolk,” pp. 19–20. For more about the influence of London commerce and production on the rural Chesapeake, see Lois Green Carr and Lorena S. Walsh, “The Standard of Living in the Colonial Chesapeake,” William and Mary Quarterly 45, no. 1 (January 1988): 139.
27. Albert Sack, “Regionalism in Early American Tea Tables,” Antiques 131, no. 1 (January 1987): 248–63.
28. David Hancock, Citizens of the World: London Merchants and Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785 (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1995). John Bivins, Jr., “A Catalog of Northern Furniture with Southern Provenances,” Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts 15, no. 2 (May 1989): 61. John Bivins, Jr., “Rhode Island Influence in the Work of Two North Carolina Cabinetmakers,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 1999), pp. 79–80. For Goodwin’s table, see Brock Jobe and Myrna Kaye, New England Furniture: The Colonial Era (Boston: Houghton MiZin Company, 1984), pp. 298–99.
29. Kane, “The Palladian Style in Rhode Island Furniture,” pp. 1–2. In England the term “fly table” typically referred to a breakfast table with short leaf supports or “flys” (Christopher Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, 2 vols. [New York: Macmillan Publishing, Co., 1978], 1:302). Martha H. Willoughby, “The Accounts of Job Townsend, Jr.,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 1999), p. 131.
30. Jeanne Vibert Sloane, “John Cahoone and the Newport Furniture Industry,” in New England Furniture, Essays in Memory of Benno M. Forman, edited by Brock Jobe (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1987), pp. 88–112. Lovell, “‘Such Furniture as Will Be Most Profitable,’” pp. 27–62. For more on the desk illustrated in fig. 38, see Luke Beckerdite, “The Early Furniture of Christopher and Job Townsend,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2000), p. 47. Beckerdite argues that many aspects of Newport case design and construction were developed to facilitate the furniture export trade.
31. McCusker and Menard, The Economy of British North America, p. 102; John J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600–1775, a Handbook (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1978), p. 133. Main, “The Standard of Living in Southern New England,” p. 127. Kerry A. Trask, In the Pursuit of Shadows: Massachusetts Millenialism and the Seven Years War (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989), pp. 2–3. Kenneth Lockridge, “Land, Population, and the Evolution of New England Society 1630–1790,” Past and Present 39 (April 1968): 68–69.
32. For a discussion about how some Pennsylvania German communities adopted and adapted Anglo-American designs, see Cynthia G. Falk, “Symbols of Assimilation or Status? The Meanings of Eighteenth-Century Houses in Coventry Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania,” Winterthur Portfolio 33, no. 2/3 (summer 1998): 107–34.
33. T. H. Breen, “The Meanings of Things: Interpreting the Consumer Economy in the Eighteenth Century,” in Brewer and Porter eds., Consumption and the World of Goods, p. 251.
34. For further discussion of the growing choices available to eighteenth-century consumers, see Martin, “Makers, Buyers, and Users,” p. 155; and Breen, “‘The Baubles of Britain’: The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century,” in Carson, Hoffman, and Albert eds., Of Consuming Interests, p. 452; and Breen, “The Meanings of Things,” p. 251.
35. Jonathan Prown and Richard Miller, “The Rococo, the Grotto, and the Philadelphia High Chest,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 1996), p. 108.
36. For more on Harding, see Luke Beckerdite, “An Identity Crisis: Philadelphia and Baltimore Furniture Styles of the Mid-Eighteenth Century,” in Shaping a National Culture: The Philadelphia Experience, 1750–1800, edited by Catherine E. Hutchins (Winterthur, Del.: Winterthur Museum, 1994), pp. 243–81. For more on furniture carving, see Luke Beckerdite, “Philadelphia Carving Shops, Part I: James Reynolds,” Antiques 124, no. 5 (May 1984): 1120–33; and Beckerdite, “Philadelphia Carving Shops, Part II: Bernard and Jugiez,” pp. 498–513; and Beckerdite, “Philadelphia Carving Shops, Part III: Hercules Courtenay and His School,” pp. 1044–63; and Beckerdite, “Carving Practices in Eighteenth Century Boston,” in New England Furniture: Essays In Memory of Benno M. Forman, pp. 123–62; and Beckerdite, “Immigrant Carvers,” pp. 233–65.
37. Christie’s, “The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. James L. Britton,” New York, January 16, 1999, lot 592. Prown and Miller, “The Rococo, the Grotto, and the Philadelphia High Chest,” p. 105.
38. For the Providence price list, see Moses, Master Craftsmen of Newport, p. 357. For the Philadelphia price list, see Martin Eli Weil, “A Cabinetmaker’s Price Book,” American Furniture and Its Makers, edited by Ian M. G. Quimby (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press for the Winterthur Museum, 1979), p. 187. The 1772 Philadelphia price list only includes mahogany and walnut, but maple was an option available throughout the region.
39. Weil, “A Cabinetmaker’s Price Book,” p. 187. “The Thomas Elfe Account Book, 1765–1775,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 37, no. 4 (October 1936): 151.
40. Willoughby, “The Accounts of Job Townsend, Jr.,” pp. 109–61.
41. For more on the Scott tea tables and stand, see Gusler, “The Tea Tables of Eastern Virginia,” pp. 1246–51. AZeck’s bill to Cadwalader is transcribed in Nicholas B. Wainwright, The House and Furniture of General John Cadwalader (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1964), p. 44.
42. Several Charleston tables with pierced C-scrolls on the undersides of the legs are known, the most elaborate of which is in the collection of the Chipstone Foundation.
43. Carole Shammas, “The Decline of Textile Prices in England and British America prior to the Revolution,” Economic History Review, n.s., 47, no. 3 (August 1994): 483–507 (JSTOR, University of Michigan, <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici>, p. 402). Adamson, “The Politics of the Caned Chair,” pp. 174–206.
44. The Stevenson tables are on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
45. Several authors discuss the piecemeal acquisition of consumer goods. See Carr and Walsh, “The Standard of Living in the Colonial Chesapeake,” p. 141; and Main, “The Standard of Living in Southern New England,” p. 128; and Sweeney, “Furniture and the Domestic Environment in Wethersfield,” p. 288. In Consumer Behavior and .Material Culture in Britain, p. 28, Lorna Weatherill demonstrated that between 1690 and 1725 middling consumers in England acquired equipment for brewing and drinking tea. Ann Smart Martin, “‘Fashionable Sugar Dishes, Latest Fashion Ware’: The Creamware Revolution in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake,” Historical Archaeology of the Chesapeake, edited by Paul A. Shackel and Barbara J. Little (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), p. 181. Carson, “The Consumer Revolution in Britain and America: Why Demand?,” p. 505.
46. Martin, “Fashionable Sugar Dishes,” pp. 169–187. McKendrick et al., The Birth of a Consumer Society, p. 2.
47. Many families took their tea on Pembroke or breakfast tables by 1790. Martin, “Fashionable Sugar Dishes,” p. 174. (The percentages for “Cream/pearlware” that appear in the “1750–59” column should appear in the “1770–79” column.)
48. This version of “A Ladies’ Adieu to her Tea Table” appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette, February 2, 1774, item 54810. Roth, “Tea Drinking in 18th-Century America,” p. 444. |