In the Grecian period, the card table continued to be an important form of parlor furniture, often made in pairs and positioned as small pier tables when not in use. The Bayou Bend example manifests the eclectic combination of references to the antique that characterize the style: paw feet in the Roman taste, lotus-shaped capitals of vaguely Egyptian taste, and Grecian anthemia on the central bronze mount. The use of painted surfaces to suggest more expensive or exotic woods returned to favor; the mahogany surfaces of this table have been grained to resemble rosewood and the paw feet painted black to look like ebony.

Technical notes: Grained, painted, and gilded mahogany birch (turned columns); mahogany veneer on eastern white pine with black walnut banding (top), ash (center section of left front foot), eastern white pine (outer section of right front foot, bottom of upper section, carved eagle bracket), cherry (braces for top). The casters are original.

Related examples: A virtually identical table, save for the central mount of the skirt, was in the collection of the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia, and then sold at Christie’s, New York, June 2, 1990, sale 8006, lot 173, present location unknown. It had been suggested that the Bayou Bend table was part of a set of furniture that included a music stand inscribed “Miss M.A. Babcock/April 1824” (Tracy and Gerdts 1963, no. 47). However, there does not seem to be any concrete evidence to support this.

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.