Tea drinking gained widespread social acceptance late in the seventeenth century, corresponding with the proliferation of an assortment of vessels deemed appropriate and necessary for the occasion. The tea table’s origins, like the beverage itself, go back to China, a precedent for the form being the Oriental wine table with its raised rim. As early as 1708 a “Tee table” is recorded in Boston, and a few Early Baroque examples, primarily from New York, are known. By the Late Baroque period the form became requisite, and in Wethersfield references to it date from the 1730s. The pleasing simplicity of this example, with its undulating skirt and ogival arch, is indebted to a Salem, Massachusetts, design.

Technical notes: The rails are shaped on all four sides. The top is pinned to the sides and the molded rim is separate. The table retains much of its finish history.

Related examples: Kirk 1967, p. 91, no. 158; Antiques 56 (September 1949), p. 147; Antiques 101 (March 1972), p. 416; Antiques 128 (August 1985), p. 177; Antiques 130 (July 1986), p. III; Antiques 132 (July 1987), p. 96; Antiques and The Arts Weekly, November 11, 1988, p. 20–I; Antiques and The Arts Weekly, July 28,1995, p. S-3. The table’s contours relate it to a group of Hartford-Wethersfield area dressing tables and high chests: Kirk 1967, pp. 48,102, nos. 81, 179; Sack 1969–92, vol. 8, p. 2288, no. P5705; Antiques 136 (December 1989), p. 1204; Jobe et al. 1991, pp. 130–32, no. 47

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.