The name “Marlborough” as a furniture term is unique to eighteenth-century America, although its exact relationship to this type of leg is not clear. According to the Philadelphia price lists, card tables with Marlborough supports were the least expensive of the three models available. They could be either plain, molded, or, like the present example, ornamented with fretwork carving. The most expensive, incorporating bases, brackets, carved moldings, and a drawer, was priced at four pounds, or 80 percent of what the basic card table with round corners cost (see B.69.19). The Bayou Bend table is among the most fully developed examples of this type, incorporating both Chinese and Gothic designs into its fretwork.

Related examples: Marlborough-legged card tables with fretwork carving include Comstock 1957a, p. 256, no. 9. Similar fretwork appears on Philadelphia cabinetmaker John Folwell’s speaker’s chair (Hornor 1977, pl. 97). Related chairs are published in Hornor 1977, pl. 260; Monkhouse and Michie 1986, pp. 167–68, no. 109. The Gothic skirt and the gadrooning as well are virtually identical to those defining the seat rail of the great Chew sofa.

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.