Throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, Rhode Island cabinetmakers and their clientele chose to retain many of the forms and motifs popular during the Late Baroque period, rarely embracing the Rococo style. An exception is the stop-fluted Marlborough leg. Even so, this Rococo element was not recorded in Newport until the mid-1780s, forty years after the Marlborough leg made its appearance in Boston. Here the addition of inlay underscores the protraction of this element. By this date Providence was beginning to surpass Newport, and in all likelihood its craftsmen were making similar tables, which complicates identifying a more precise origin.

Technical notes: Mahogany, unidentified inlay; mahogany (side rails), eastern white pine (front rail blocks, fixed back rail), birch (hinge rail, pin). The hinge consists of five parts. There are two rear rails with spacers in-between. Large blocks back the concave sections of the front skirt. The lower half of the top has a discrete line inlay around the edge. The playing surface is completely plain. The frame carries a label with the number 15519/v-x.

Related examples: Tables in museum collections include Greenlaw 1974, pp. 162–63, no. 140; Jobe and Kaye 1984, pp. 291–94, no. 70; Jobe et al. 1991, pp. 182–85, no. 68.

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.