Oval Table with Falling Leaves Maker: Unknown

1690–1740

American Decorative Arts

On view, 1st floor, American Decorative Arts before 1900

Tables with falling leaves were popular in the eighteenth century. This feature enabled the form to be either large or compact. Such tables were portable and would have been kept along the perimeter of the room when not in use. The table is an extraordinary survival of colonial Southern furniture. The presence of bald cypress, a native tree in mid-Atlantic lowland swamps, and the discovery of the table in the Albemarle Sound area of North Carolina strengthen its attribution to the region.

Medium

Black walnut, yellow-poplar, southern yellow pine, baldcypress

Dimensions

28 1/4 × 51 3/4 × 18 3/4 in. (71.7 × 131.45 × 47.63 cm)
other (open): 40 1/4 × 58 11/16 in. (102.24 × 149.01 cm)

Credit Line

Mabel Brady Garvan Collection

Accession Number

1930.2110

Geography

Made in Virginia, or South Carolina

Culture

American

Period

17th–18th century

Classification

Furniture

Disclaimer

Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of records is ongoing.

Provenance
With Bessie Lee Brockwell (Mrs. John E. Brockwell, née Bessie Lee Collier, 1881–1964), Petersburg, Va. [see note 1] Acquired by Francis P. Garvan (1875–1937), New York, 1924; given to the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn., 1930

Note 1: There is uncharacteristic ambiguity concerning the provenance of this table, which Garvan purchased in 1924. A notation on Garvan’s catalogue card reads: "This table was brought out of Albermarle [sic] Swamp, Virginia, in 1924 by Negroes." When it was published in Antiques in 1925, however, the table was said to have been found "in the Albemarle Sound district of North Carolina," information that was supplied by Garvan's secretary (letter to Homer Eaton Keyes, January 22, 1925, Keyes file, Francis P. Garvan. Correspondence, Related Papers, and Collection Files. American Arts Office, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven). Given the fact that no Virginia swamp is commonly known by the name "Albemarle," it seems likely that the account published in Antiques is correct. The photograph of this table published by Paul H. Burroughs in 1931 was credited to the antiques dealer Mrs. J.L. Brockwell, but no correspondence between Mrs. Brockwell and Garvan survives to prove that he purchased the table from her (David L . Barquist, American Tables and Looking Glasses in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1992), p. 123).
Bibliography
  • David L. Barquist, Elisabeth Donaghy Garrett, and Gerald W. R. Ward, American Tables and Looking Glasses in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1992), 40, 122–24, no. 43, pl. 2, ill
  • Handbook of the Collections, exh. cat. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1992), 88, ill
  • Helen Comstock, "Furniture of Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Kentucky," Antiques 61 (January 1952), fig. 144
  • Charles Nagel, Jr., American Furniture: 1650–1850 (New York: Chanticleer Press, 1949), pl. 4b
  • Thomas H. Ormsbee, The Story of American Furniture (New York: MacMillan Company, 1934), 84
  • Paul H. Burroughs, Southern Antiques (Richmond, Va.: Garrett & Massie Incorporated, 1931), pl. 1
  • Leslie Richardson, "An Early Connecticut Interior," Antiques 16 (December 1929), 501, fig. 2
  • Edward Wenham, The Collector's Guide to Furniture Design (New York: Collectors Press Lithography Workshop, 1928), n.p., fig. 517
  • Luke Vincent Lockwood, Colonial Furniture in America, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926), vol. 2, p. 323, 325, fig. CIX
  • "A Rare Southern Table," Antiques 8 (July 1925), 12
Object copyright
No Copyright - United States
Additional information

Object/Work type

tables (support furniture)

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