Tilt-top table (98.74)

Late classical style tilt top table with rococo revival scalloped top featuring a trefoil drop gallery. Top decorated with central floral bouquet and birds surrounded by gilded vines, grapes and grape leaves. Vasiform pillar decorated with flowers and gilded pinstriping. Base composed of shaped horizontal element with S curved and voluted brackets and applied roundels at the tips. All resting on four incurved volute feet. CONSTRUCTION: Top of three laminated boards with decorative drop gallery secured with cut nails. Central block attached in usual manner with circular tenons into battens. Battens secured with screws. Threaded vertical extension of pillar screws into block. Pillar tenoned into base and secured with wedge. S scrolled brackets attached to side of pillar with dowels and to base with cut nails. Turned roundels glued to tips of base. Four scrolled feet secured to underside of base with glue and cut nails.

Provenance Narrative Descended in the donor's family. Painted or "cottage furniture" with elaborate decoration became popular by the mid-1840s especially in the new rococo revival style. Its popularity became so popular that it showed up in magazine like Godey's Ladies Journal. There it was described as "cottage furniture." Furniture in this style often, although not always, was offered as part of sets. In 1850 referring to cottage furniture, Andrew Jackson Downing in The Architecture of Country Houses stated, "this furniture is remarkable for its combination of lightness and strength, and its essentially cottage-like character" (p.415). Makers marketed this kind of furniture towards the middle class.

Place Made United States, Baltimore, MD or Philadelphia, PA