Card Table
- Card Table
Closed: 28 3/8 × 34 1/4 × 18 1/8 in. (72.1 × 87 × 46 cm)
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Newport card tables exhibit a variety of contoured fronts and tops, including half-round shape ends, rounded ends, cyma-curved with blocked ends, blocked centers, and ends with blocked corners and a straight front. The Bayou Bend table, representing the latter configuration, in all probability was modeled after tables produced in Boston or New York, where this shape was more prevalent. The juxtaposition of claw and pad feet is characteristic of Newport, as well as New York and England, and presumably indicates a conscious choice to control costs.
Related examples: Carpenter 1954, p. 93, no. 65; Nutting 1962, nos. 792–96; Antiques 102 (August 1972), p. 188; Antiques 121 (May 1982), p. 1226; Moses 1984, p. 120; Sotheby’s, New York, sale 6763, October 22, 1995, lot 270; Sotheby’s, New York, sale 6899, October 19, 1996, lot 242
Book excerpt: Warren, David B., Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.
Provenance[St. James Gallery, by June 5, 1950]; [Ginsburg & Levy, New York, June 5, 1950–June 29, 1953]; purchased by Miss Ima Hogg, June 29, 1953; given to MFAH, by 1966 [1].
[1] Letter from Miss Ima Hogg to Lee H. B. Malone, Director of MFAH, giving the card table to the MFAH, December 23, 1953. In 1969, the accession number later changed from MFA53.49 to B.69.88.
Published References The Magazine Antiques 64 (July 1953), p. 11; Carpenter, Ralph E., Jr. The Arts and Crafts of Newport, Rhode Island, 1640−1820. Newport, R.I.: Preservation Society of New port County, 1954, p. 91, no. 63; Comstock, Helen. American Furniture, Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Century Styles. New York: Viking Press, 1962, no. 365; Warren, David B. Bayou Bend: American Furniture, Paintings and Silver from the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975, p. 57, no. 107; Moses, Lisa, and Michael Moses. “Authenticating John Townsend’s and John Goddard’s Queen Anne and Chippendale Tables.” The Magazine Antiques 121 (May 1982), p. 1138; Moses, Michael. Master Craftsmen of Newport: The Townsends and the Goddards. Tenafly, NJ: MMI Americana Press, 1984, p. 231. Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Cataloguing data may change with further research.
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