An Important Federal Brass-Mounted Carved and Figured Mahogany Marble-Top Pier Table, attributed to Thomas Seymour with John Seymour, carving attributed to Thomas Wightman circa 1805

appears to retain its original imported Italian marble top and original finish.  Underside of marble inscribed Joel Koopman / 18 Beacon Street / Boston / Mass.

The consignor's father purchased the table in 1966.  This pier table had been unrecorded and unknown until recently discovered by an appraiser.

Secondary wood is cherrywood (determined by scientific analysis); proper right front corner of Corinthian capital on leg chipped, 1 in. by ¼ in. chip to central carved element, 1 in. by ½ in. chip to veneer on the proper left corner adjacent to central carving, lacking one mahogany corner piece to shelf, brass gallery loose and unattached to many areas of lower shelf. Underside of marble inscribed Joel Koopman 18 beacon st. boston, Mass. The proper left front leg has a 2 in. chip to ruffled edge of foot. Minor patches to veneer.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

This rare table is a virtual copy of engraved design Plate 63 titled "Pire-Table" published by Thomas Sheraton in his The Cabinet Dictionary in London, 1803. Thomas Seymour, Boston's leading Federal-era cabinetmaker, must have owned a copy of this publication along with Sheraton's better-known 1793 two-volume The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book², both volumes of which survive with Seymour's inscribed signature.³ Seymour might have purchased the sequel Dictionary as early as 1804 when he opened his influential Boston Furniture Warehouse adjacent to the fashionable pedestrian Mall on Boston Common. Or it might have been acquired as late as 1808 when he began making a large group of London-style furniture for Salem style-maven Elizabeth Derby, with some of these pieces clearly based in part on designs in the Cabinet Dictionary.

Seymour relied heavily on  Sheraton's Cabinet Dictionary for entire designs and numerous selected design elements for furniture he made during the period 1809-1817. His newspaper advertisement of September 27, 1809 described a lengthy list of his usual offerings but notably included a last line stating that, "Several articles of a new and elegant style, will shortly be exhibited by him as above." ⁴ This may well describe Seymour's versions of furniture in English Regency designs which he made beginning about this date, perhaps including this table. In coming years, he would be the first in Boston to introduce a number of Regency designs and forms including sofa tables, Quartetto tables and gaming tables with tops that could be slid out and flipped over to offer the option of different gaming surfaces.

A pair to this table may have originally accompanied the present example although single pier tables were most common in this country. Sheraton explained the derivation of the appellation "Pier table" – "In house architecture, it is used to denote that part of a wall which is between the windows. Hence the term pier table, in cabinet work, which are made to fit in between the architraves of the windows....[in his design] the top is supposed to be of marble, the shelf of wood, with a brass border or fret round it, except the front."⁵ Fancy candelabra or the latest innovation in patent oil lighting was placed on the table top to be reflected and amplified by a large mirror which was usually hung on the wall behind. The marble top would have protected against the inevitable oil spills.

The present pier table is among the most ambitious of Seymour's early "Boston Regency" designs, in fact it is among the most ambitious adaptations of any English furniture made in Boston in the entire Federal period. The use of mahogany only without any contrasting lightwood crossbanding or decorative  stringing, the use of double-bead moldings rebated into lower rail edges and single bead moldings grooved in to form faux panels on rail faces and upper leg blocks were typical for Seymour's Regency designs made in the period ca. 1810-1817. A recent scholarly study of Philadelphia pier tables indicate they were owned almost exclusively by the wealthiest residents and served as conspicuous totems of wealth in their front ("best") parlors.⁶ Typically they would have been accompanied by expensive lighting devices such as argand lamps and a gilt looking glass on the wall behind. Many had mirrors mounted behind the rear legs unlike this example. 

Three other tables of similar ambitious design are known.  A pair which probably belonged originally to Elizabeth Derby of Salem and which were donated by a family descendant to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have long been considered masterpieces of the period. These share numerous features in common with the current table, including use of cherry as secondary wood, a lower shelf of one thin board of mahogany supported by X-crossed and tapering mahogany rails with threaded iron pins at the corners, meticulous joinery and a pierced brass decorative gallery around three sides of the lower shelf. Most prominently the three tables share virtually identical elaborate patterns of superb stylized leafage carving and reeding on the legs executed by the Seymours' favorite carver, Thomas Wightman. Leafage is cut in extremely crisp and precise style typical of Wightman in patterns adapted from but even more elaborate than Sheraton's engraved design. The three tables also retain their original secondary glue blocks behind the legs, two blocks per leg, in this case with one block overlapping the other and with the resulting two-part block rounded on the outer faces. The fourth table is somewhat simpler and has been altered.⁷

Thomas Wightman's naturalization application in Boston stated that he had worked as a carver in London for ten years prior to emigration. His crisp and precise London style was perfectly suited to execute Sheraton's design. He may have worked almost exclusively for the Seymours during most of his career in Boston from 1798 up to 1817 when Thomas Seymour went out of business as an independent artisan. The two collaborated on another "Boston Regency" design following one of Sheraton's Cabinet Dictionary engravings of 1803. Figure 17 titled "Grecian Dining Table" also illustrates a pair of Grecian sofas with saber legs which are reminiscent of the pair of sofas made in 1817 by Seymour and Wightman for George Crowninshield Jr. of Salem for his pleasure yacht Cleopatria's Barge. The two also made a pair of elaborate "harp-base" card tables for the yacht's salon/cabin.⁸

The principal differences between the present table and Elizabeth Derby's pair of tables are the veneering and the materials of the tops. Hers are mahogany, veneered on the top with elaborate figured burlwood and crotch veneers and crossbanded with a variety of fancy veneers and stringing patterns. The present table employs instead an imported Italian marble top of cream, purple and pink variegated figure. It is most similar to the species Brèche Violette from a quarry located in Servezza in the Carrara Basin of Italy, and was reportedly used also for the fireplace in the gaming salon at Versailles.⁹ The table structure is framed with two thick medial rails front-to-back to help support the marble's considerable weight, joined to the front and rear apron rails with sliding dovetail joints. Like the four main rails, the medial rails are made of cherry, and coupled with the lack of any screw pockets on inner rail surfaces, indicate that the table always had a marble top. Derby's tables lack the two medial rails found here and required to support a heavy stone slab.

Although Seymour typically used either plain white (Vermont or Western Massachusetts) or Pennsylvania "clouded" gray marble and usually employed a wood frame with fancy veneer and stringing to enclose the edges, others of Seymour's tables also employed imported Italian marble. A pair of marble-top pier tables which he made for Boston marine insurance millionaire Peter Chardon Brooks in 1816-17 each has a similar pair of medial support rails for the heavy marble. Brooks's financial waste books record payment to Seymour for these tables in August 1816, and Brook's subsequent payment in December, 1817 "for sundry marble ornaments sent to us from Italy by order of Mr. Stephen Gorham [his nephew and business agent]" including the "two slabs".¹⁰  A small Regency-style gaming table by Seymour, also has an original imported Italian marble top, in this case with an inlaid specimen top forming a chessboard.¹¹

The marble top on the present table is inscribed on the underside in black crayon, "Joel Koopman/18 Beacon Street/Boston/Mass". Joel Koopman Antiques (later Koopman Antiques) was an antique sales firm founded by Koopman (1847 in Holland –    ) in Boston in 1888 but which later moved to New York City in 1936 where it operated until the death of Joel's successor Harry Koopoman in 1945.¹²  An 1889 advertisement of the firm states that they enjoy "a national reputation as extensive importers of antique furniture and silverware, having establishments at No. 27 Beacon Street [Boston] .... and No. 326 Fifth Avenue, New York, and their main headquarters at Snssenstraat, Zwolle, Holland." ¹³ Joel Koopman was born in The Netherlands in 1847 but immigrated to this country and married here. His only child, daughter Rena (1886-1947), married a Koopman employee, Harry Solomon (1883-1945). Solomon agreed to change his name to Koopman in order to continue the family name, and the extensive surviving business papers date from the period of his leadership of the firm.¹⁴

The inscribed address on the marble top, "18 Beacon Street/Boston/Mass" indicates the table was sold by the firm prior to its move to New York in 1936, thus sometime ca. 1893-1936. No family history accompanied the table to the current owner. The twelve volumes of Koopman business accounts include no explicit record of a pier table or marble slab. An August 30, 1930 entry does record a $46 charge to a W. W. T. Hollingsworth for "Repairing Consoles" including materials but with no further detail. If the entry describes the current table, its paired mate may remain undiscovered.¹⁵

Harry Koopman counted among his clients a cross-section of elite collectors and museums of the day. He was a trusted adviser for many years of Henry DuPont, and sold for example the monumental Italian marble sculpture "St. Michael Vanquishing Satan" by Scipio Tadolini of 1869 to Boston College.¹⁶

Robert D. Massey, November 2009.

¹ Wood identification by Harry A. Alden of Alden Identification Service, Chesapeake Beach, MD.
² Sheraton notes on page 339 in the section titled "Additions and Corrections" in  his Dictionary that the spelling of "Pire" is a mistake of the engraver.
³ Owned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. These were discovered by a Rare Book Dealer in central Massachusetts near Lunenburg where Thomas Seymour retired.  Sheraton first published this in forty-two serial parts and plates in the period 1791-93, then assembled and published these in 1793 as the first edition of his Drawing Book.
⁴ Columbian Centinel, Sept. 27, 1809.
⁵ Sheraton, Cabinet Dictionary, see under "Pier."
⁶ Nicholas C. Vincent, "Philadelphia Pier Tables and Their Role in Cultures of Sociability and Competition", in American Furniture 2008 (Milwaukee: Chipstone Foundation), pp 88-130.
⁷ The fourth related table is at Gore Place, Waltham, MA. The top is replaced and the lower shelf with brass gallery edges is missing. Screw pockets on inner apron rail edges indicate this had a wood top originally, it has one medial rail under the top. The leg turning and carving patterns are somewhat simpler than the Sotheby's table. It incorporates lightwood crotch-figured veneers and crossbanding on the rails like Elizabeth Derby's pair of tables. This was donated to Gore Place by Trustee Susan Higginson Nash, an antique dealer in Boston in the 1960's and 1970's.  
⁸ See Robert D. Mussey, Jr., The Furniture Masterworks of John and Thomas Seymour (Salem: Peabody Essex Museum, 2003), Cat. no. 114, pp 362-3.
⁹ See Jacques Dubarry de Lassale Identifying Marble (Turin, Italy:  Éditions H. Vial, 2000),  pp 176-7, no. 78. Carrara marble was typically exported from the closest port in Livorno (Leghorn is the English version). Numerous Boston shipping records
¹⁰ Illustrated and discussed in Mussey, Masterworks of John and Thomas Seymour, pp 286-7. The tables are now at the [President John and Abigail] Adams National Historic Site, Quincy, MA. Brook's daughter Abigail married Charles Francis Adams, a son of John Quincy Adams, and brought these and another pair of tables made by Seymour and recorded in Brooks's accounts to the Adams house.
¹¹ See ibid., Cat. no. 117, pp 368-9.
¹² The 1936 move to 799 Madison Avenue  is recorded in a New York Times story, Oct. 7, 1936. Harry Koopman's obituary in the New York Times, March 6, 1945, states he was born in New York City, had been a dealer in Boston and New York since 1915, and was "known to collectors and curators throughout the country", that "He was an expert on English and Continental Porcelain. It states he died at age 61, indicating a birth date in 1884.  Robert Means Lawrence's Old Park Street and Its Vicinity (Boston: Houghton and Mifflin, 1922) states that Henry and Julius Koopman were tenants until 1893 at a property formerly the old Molineux Mansion which was taken in that year to become part of the Massachusetts State House grounds. It was very near the 18 Beacon Street address, and might have been the year the firm moved there.
¹³ Illustrated Boston. The Metropolis of New England, 2^nd ed. (New York: American Publishing & Engraving Co., 1889), listing for "Koopman & Co., Antique Furniture". This states that they were "Importers of Antique Furniture and Silverware, No. 27 Beacon Street ....  ."
¹⁴ Portions of the histories of the Koopman/Solomon family history of the Koopman firm including Solomon's name change are taken from the Winterthur Museum on-line catalog information for the 12 volumes of Koopman Antiques Business Records which are  housed in the WM Library. This summary unfortunately does not cite its sources.  The relationship of Harry Koopman to  Henry Koopman of H. Koopman and Sons, dealers in Antiques at 16 E. 46^th Street, New York, is unknown, although see Fn. 12 above for "Henry and Julius" Koopman in Boston.  Henry's obituary of Oct. 27, 1919 in the New York Times at age 71 implies he was the correct age to have been Joel Koopman's brother and thus uncle of Koopman's wife Rena. The American Art Galleries sold Henry's collection at auction in sessions May 9-12, 1921, see the sale catalogue for 841 lots in the American Art Association's  "Illustrated Catalogue of the Extensive and Valuable Collection of Antique Furniture and other Artistic Property Belonging to the Estate of the Widely Known Antiquarian Henry Koopman." An "Art Notes" article in the New York Times, May 5, 1921 preceding the sale indicates he was first established in business in New York in 1883 at 17^th Street, so he may have been involved in family businesses both in Boston and New York.
¹⁵ Entry for Aug. 30, 1930, Koopman Sales Book, August 1929 - August 1931, Winterthur Acc. 05x157.1. By the time of Harry Koopman's move to New York in 1936, the business records indicate he was dealing almost exclusively in ceramics, very little with furniture and textiles, and he had discontinued his formerly extensive furniture repair and restoration activities
¹⁶ In Rev. Charles F. Donovan, Gasson's Rotunda: Gallery of Art, History and Religion, from a series of Rev. Charles F.Donovan's Occasional Papers (Boston: Boston College, 1992) pp 1-5.