1. David Longworth, Longworth’s American Almanack, New-York Register, and City Directory (New York, 1805), p. 111. Margo C. Flannery reports that about one thousand furniture makers were listed in New York City directories between 1795 and 1825 in “Richard Allison and the New York City Federal Style,” Antiques 103, no. 5 (May 1973): 1001. Marilynn A. Johnson, “John Hewitt, Cabinetmaker,” Winterthur Portfolio 4 (1968), pp. 185–205. Peter M. Kenny, “From New Bedford to New York to Rio and Back: The Life and Times of Elisha Blossom, Jr., Artisan of the New Republic,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2003), pp. 238–69.

2. A demilune card table with the label of New Yorker George Shipley (active 1791–1795) is identified as a Providence, Rhode Island, product; the Charles Courtright label on another demilune card table, probably of New York manufacture, is called spurious in Benjamin A. Hewitt, Patricia E. Kane, and Gerald W. R. Ward, The Work of Many Hands: Card Tables in Federal America, 1790–1820 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1982), nos. 32, 39. Patricia E. Kane, “Design Books and Price Books for American Federal-Period Card Tables,” in ibid., p. 46.

3. Charles F. Montgomery, American Furniture: The Federal Period (New York: Viking Press, 1966), no. 297. The mate to the commemorative table shown in figure 1 was sold in Sotheby’s, Important Americana, New York, January 21–22, 2000, lot 730. “Ovalo” corners, commonly spelled “ovolo” today, appear throughout The Journeymen Cabinet & Chair Makers’ New-York Book of Prices (New York: T. & J. Swods, No. 99 Pearl-Street, 1796) and The New-York Book of Prices for Cabinet & Chair Work, agreed upon by the Employers (New York: Southwick and Crooker, September 1802). The term was dropped from The New-York Revised Prices for Manufacturing Cabinet and Chair Work (New York: Southwick and Pelsue, 1810) and later price books. Between 1800 and 1806 New York cabinetmaker John Hewitt shipped “inlaid sash cornered” sideboards to Savannah, which seems to be this shape. Johnson, “John Hewitt,” pp. 186–88. For more on the woods used in card tables made in New York, see Hewitt, Kane, and Ward, Many Hands, chart 12, p. 194. For another card table similar to the example illustrated in figure 3, see ibid., pp. 89–91, no. 37. According to David L. Barquist, the vertically laminated ovolo corners of the card table shown in figure 3 are made of tulip poplar (American Tables and Looking Glasses in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University [New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1992], no. 108). Philip D. Zimmerman, “The Architectural Furniture of Duncan Phyfe, 1830–1845,” in The Richard and Beverly Kelly Collection (Portsmouth, N.H.: Northeast Auctions, April 3, 2005), p. 15, fig. 7. Hewitt, Kane, and Ward, Many Hands, chart 12, p. 194.

4. For a New York six-leg card table with two swinging legs and a Rhode Island six-legged table with one swing leg, see J. Michael Flanigan, American Furniture from the Kaufman Collection (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1986), nos. 64, 68. New-York Book of Prices 1802, p. 20. New-York Book of Prices 1796, p. 35. New-York Revised Prices 1810, p. 24; and The New-York Book of Prices for Manufacturing Cabinet and Chair Work (New York: J. Seymour, 1817), p. 34. The Journeymen Cabinet and Chair-Makers’ Pennsylvania Book of Prices (Philadelphia: Printed for the Society, 1811), p. 33.

5. New-York Book of Prices 1802, p. 21.

6. For a table with matched veneers, see Berry B. Tracy, Federal Furniture and Decorative Arts at Boscobel (New York: Boscobel Restoration and Harry N. Abrams, 1981), no. 28. New-York Revised Prices 1810, p. 26.

7. For card tables with unvarnished veneer on the underside of the stationary leaf, see Montgomery, American Furniture, nos. 314, 319, 320; and Tracy, Federal Furniture, no. 27. New-York Book of Prices 1817, p. 3. Tracy, Federal Furniture, no. 52; white pine boards are used elsewhere in the bed steps. Thomas Sheraton, The Cabinet Dictionary, 2 vols. (1803; reprint, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970), 1: 129–30. For a card table with a leather playing surface and a fixed leaf with underside veneer, see Montgomery, American Furniture, no. 318.

8. New-York Book of Prices 1802 states, “All straight drawers the top edge slip’d with mahogany” (p. 3), and “the top edge of the drawer fronts slipt with mahogany” (p. 9). New-York Book of Prices 1796, p. 9, includes an entry for “Slipping drawer sides, and rounding the slips,” which may be more representative of London practices. New-York Book of Prices 1802, p. 21.

9. For a New York card table with a full-width, single-board top, see The Taft Museum: The History of the Collections and the Baum-Taft House, edited by Edward J. Sullivan (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1995), p. 103. Glue joints between the boards are sometimes diYcult to detect.

10. Core woods of some top leaves are visible through mortises cut through the slipped back edges for alignment tenons.

11. New-York Book of Prices 1796, p. 36. Thomas Sheraton, The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing-Book (1793; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1972), p. 161. Sheraton recommended 3 1/2" widths in his Cabinet Dictionary, 1: 129.

12. The term “rear leaf-edge tenon” is used in Hewitt, Kane, and Ward, Many Hands, chart 12, p. 194. Only 2 of the 27 New York tables in Hewitt’s study had three rear leaf-edge tenons, but this author knows of many others. Some card tables from other regions do not have any alignment tenons, and only those made in New York are known to have four. New-York Book of Prices 1817, p. 3. The two nearly identical tables (acc. nos. 57.722 and 57.723) are installed as a pair in the Phyfe Room. One (57.723) is illustrated in Montgomery, American Furniture, no. 315. See card table 1932.8 in Taft Museum, p. 103.

13. For comparative uses in card tables, see Hewitt, Kane, and Ward, Many Hands, chart 11, p. 194. Several visual identifications recorded as white pine may actually be other, visually similar woods, such as Atlantic white cedar, but reliable evidence confirms widespread use of white pine in furniture making. The card table illustrated in figure 1 has a walnut outer rear rail, which is an exception. A similar exception occurs in the walnut hinged supports, or “flies,” of a New York Pembroke table at Winterthur labeled by George Woodruff. See Montgomery, American Furniture, no. 331.

14. This early generation of the form was produced only in New York and, to a lesser degree, in Philadelphia. For a Philadelphia example, see Philip D. Zimmerman et al., Sewell C. Biggs Museum of American Art: A Catalogue, 2 vols. (Dover, Del.: Biggs Museum, 2002), 1: 51, no. 34. New-York Revised Prices 1810, p. 25. Some tables are so closely balanced, especially when closed, that the direction of pivoting rear-leg casters determines whether the table will stand unsupported.

15. As quoted in Jack L. Lindsey, “An Early Latrobe Furniture Commission,” Antiques 139, no. 1 (January 1991): 212. Lindsey dates the card table circa 1808. As quoted in Beatrice B. Garvan, Federal Philadelphia, 1785–1825: The Athens of the Western World (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1987), p. 91. The undated Latrobe designs for the Madison seating, which are believed to be circa 1809 based on correspondence, show chairs that have elaborate stretchers on deeply curved front and rear legs, in contrast to the bold, stretcherless designs of the Waln chairs. Arguments can be advanced to support either set as the earlier. The author thanks Christopher Storb for providing further information. George Wright is listed in Deborah Ducoff-Barone, “Philadelphia Furniture Makers, 1800–1815,” Antiques 145, no. 5 (May 1991): 995.

16. Ralph Edwards, The Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture: From the Middle Ages to the Late Georgian Period (London: Country Life, 1964), pp. 526–27, fig. 31. As quoted in Barquist, American Tables, p. 220. Prices of Cabinet Work, with Tables and designs . . . revised and corrected by a committee of Master Cabinet Makers. These two price books are in the British Library. The author thanks Adam Bowett for bringing them to his attention and checking their contents. Peter M. Kenny, Frances F. Bretter, and Ulrich Leben, Honoré Lannuier: Cabinetmaker from Paris (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998), nos. 57–58, 61, pp. 150–52. Peter Kenny dates the label on the basis of style between 1810 and 1812. Written and other evidence does not allow precise dating for the Lannuier card tables, the labels, or documented or attributed Lannuier furniture related to these card tables. The original owner of the pair of card tables also owned a bedstead, which bears the third Lannuier label, stylistically dated from after 1812 to 1819.

17. Additional Revised Prices, p. 3, Hirsch Library, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Additional Prices Agreed Upon by the New-York Society of Journeymen Cabinet Makers (July 1815), Winterthur Library. Jeanne ffibert Sloane, “A Duncan Phyfe Bill and the Furniture It Documents,” Antiques 131, no. 5 (May 1987): 1109, fig. 6. Robert D. Mussey Jr., The Furniture Masterworks of John and Thomas Seymour (Salem, Mass.: Peabody Essex Museum, 2003), no. 113. The date range of 1808–1815 assigned to card table no. 112 is too early. Jonathan L. Fairbanks and Elizabeth Bidwell Bates dated it circa 1818 in American Furniture: 1620 to the Present (New York: Richard Marek Publishers, 1981), p. 256; and Richard H. Randall Jr. dated it 1815–1825 in American Furniture in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1965), no. 105. Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley, “Survival of the Fittest: The Lloyd Family’s Furniture Legacy,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2002), p. 35; Alexandra A. Alevizatos, “‘Procured of the Best and Most Fashionable Materials’: The Furniture and Furnishings of the Lloyd Family, 1750–1850” (master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1999), p. 221. The author dates the table 1810–1815 and 1810–1820 in earlier studies: Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley, “A New Suspect: Baltimore Cabinetmaker Edward Priestley,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2000), pp. 113–15; and Alevizatos, “‘Procured of the Best and Most Fashionable Materials,’” pp. 335–37. Robert D. Schwarz, The Stephen Girard Collection (Philadelphia: Girard College, 1980), no. 23.

18. Montgomery, American Furniture, no. 318. A similar card table also labeled by Brauwers is no. 16 in Classical America, 1815–1845 (Newark, N.J.: Newark Museum Association, 1963). Additional Revised Prices, p. 3; Additional Prices 1815, p. 5; and New-York Book of Prices 1817, p. 34. Another construction feature that distinguishes the Brauwers table from other New York work is visible on the underside of the fixed top leaf: it combines mahogany veneer on secondary wood longitudinal boards with unveneered solid mahogany clamps. Montgomery, American Furniture, no. 319. The laminations on this table frame are unusual in having wood grain oriented in parallel rather than at oblique angles.

19. A much earlier and isolated exception can be found in an undated Philadelphia-made armchair with a lyre-shaped back splat. Perhaps one of twelve belonging to George Washington, the chair resembles a set made between 1792 and 1797 by Adam Haines of Philadelphia. See Deborah D. Waters, Delaware Collections in the Museum of the Historical Society of Delaware (Wilmington, Del.: Historical Society of Delaware, 1984), no. 11; Kathleen Catalano and Richard C. Nylander, “New Attributions to Adam Haines, Philadelphia Furniture Maker,” Antiques 117, no. 5 (May 1980): 1112, 1114. An apparent second member of the lyre-back set, not examined by the author, differs in its finials and other small decorative details, which may represent later changes to either of the two surviving chairs. See Sotheby Parke-Bernet, American Heritage Auction of Americana, New York, January 27–30, 1982, lot 1094. Montgomery, American Furniture, pp. 124, 126–28, nos. 72–73. The Phyfe drawing is on a separate piece of paper from the Bancker bill and is not dated but is presumed to be related to the bill. Sloane, “A Duncan Phyfe Bill,” p. 1109, pl. II, fig. 7.

20. Mention of lyres is absent from the 1810 New-York Revised Prices and the 1811 Pennsylvania Book of Prices. For examples with crossed lyres, see Montgomery, American Furniture, no. 320; Kenny, Bretter, and Leben, Honoré Lannuier, nos. 62–63; and Tracy, Federal Furniture, no. 27. Additional Revised Prices, p. 4. Peter Kenny identifies this little booklet, a copy of which is in the Library of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as pre-1815, in Kenny, Bretter, and Leben, Honoré Lannuier, p. 82 n. 90. See also p. 179.

21. New-York Book of Prices 1796, pp. 33, 36, 62, table 17. An obscure circumstance occurred in 1806 when furniture maker James Linacre of Albany charged Peter E. Elmendorf “To repairing a tabel and cuting the corners.” A rectangular, Marlborough-leg Pembroke table with large cants at the corners of the drop leaves survives with other Elmendorf furniture and may be this table. See Anne Ricard Cassidy, “Furniture in Upstate New York, 1760–1840: The Glen-Sanders Collection” (master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1981), p. 38.

22. Sloane, “A Duncan Phyfe Bill,” p. 1109, fig. 6. Veneer covers the tops and sides, but splitting patterns reveal the inner structure of a near mate to the Brinckerhoff table. Kenny, Bretter, and Leben, Honoré Lannuier, nos. 64–87. Barquist, American Tables, no. 120; American Furniture with Related Decorative Arts, 1660–1830: The Milwaukee Art Museum and the Layton Art Collection, edited by Gerald W. R. Ward (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1991), no. 97; and Kenny, Bretter, and Leben, Honoré Lannuier, figs. 52, 93. Bernard & S. Dean Levy, Inc., photo files.

23. Kenny, Bretter, and Leben, Honoré Lannuier, p. 178.

24. Collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Albany Institute of History and Art. Kenny, Bretter, and Leben, Honoré Lannuier, nos. 70–73. Peter M. Kenny, “Opulence Abroad: Charles-Honoré Lannuier’s Gilded Furniture in Trinidad de Cuba,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2004), pp. 239–64, figs. 6, 11. Tracy, Federal Furniture, no. 39; and Israel Sack, Inc., Opportunities in American Antiques, brochure 39 (June 1, 1984), p. 66, no. p5554. For the London Book of Prices engraving, see Montgomery, American Furniture, p. 359.

25. Kenny, Bretter, and Leben, Honoré Lannuier, nos. 55–56. The circa 1810 date assigned to no. 306 in Montgomery, American Furniture, is too early. In Hewitt, Kane, and Ward, Many Hands, no. 41, the authors call the swivel-top tables “the earliest known documented example of this simple construction” yet provide no dating beyond Lannuier’s birth and death. Elisabeth Donaghy Garrett, The Arts of Independence: The DAR Museum Collection (Washington, D.C.: National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution, 1985), p. 117, nos. 115, 116. Barquist, American Tables, no. 117.

26. For Pembroke tables with a single urn-shaped and waterleaf-carved pillar above four swept legs, see Montgomery, American Furniture, no. 332; Tracy, Federal Furniture, no. 35; and Nancy McClelland, Duncan Phyfe and the English Regency, 1795–1830 (New York: William R. Scott, 1939), pls. 133, 137. Barquist, American Tables, no. 119.

27. Another Phyfe-labeled card table of this form is in Kenny, Bretter, and Leben, Honoré Lannuier, fig. 104. Israel Sack, Inc., Opportunities in American Antiques, brochure 43 (July 1, 1988), no. p6037; and Christie’s, Important American Furniture, New York, October 8, 1997, lot 86.

28. T. Webster and Mrs. Parkes, An Encyclopedia of Domestic Economy (1845; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1848), p. 261.