By the 1850s the furniture forms found in the Rococo Revival parlor were virtually standardized—one or more sofas, armchairs and side chairs, étagère, and center table. The méridienne, or couch, added another form of seating furniture. However, the full-blown Rococo-style card table with folding top, such as this pair, seems to be a relatively rare form; in fact, it can be traced to one shop only that of Charles Baudouine. Documentation is found in an 1852 bill of sale, where an identical pair is described as multiform. Indeed, these two tables, when not used for cards or placed against the wall as small pier tables, can be placed back to back and secured with knobbed screws to form a center table.

Technical notes: Mahogany (top board, front rail, drawer front); yellow-poplar (drawer bottom base), black walnut (support panel underneath drawer pocket, side of drawer pocket), ash (top rail of swing leg), primavera (right side of drawer, drawer bottom veneer, drawer back).

Related examples: An identical pair was purchased by James Watson Williams for his Utica, New York, house, Fountain Elms, and is documented by a bill from Baudouine dated May 26, 1852. The tables (Comstock 1962, no. 650) remain at Fountain Elms, but the bill is now in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum (for information on Fountain Elms, see Franco 1973). It is interesting to note that the Heitmanns were married just a year later, suggesting this sort of table was a model available from Baudouine in the early 1850s. Other examples: a pair in the collection of Stuart P. Feld; one in a private collection on loan to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; MFA, Boston (acc. no. 1981.299).

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, 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.