Fine and Rare Queen Anne Maple Splay-Legged Tea Table, Possibly Connecticut or Portsmouth, New Hampshire, circa 1760

Lot Closed

January 21, 04:01 PM GMT

Estimate

8,000 - 12,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property from the Collection of a Founding Family of Connecticut

Fine and Rare Queen Anne Maple Splay-Legged Tea Table

Possibly Connecticut or Portsmouth, New Hampshire

circa 1760

bears a type-written note on the underside reading, An early oval, maple top table, with scalloped skirt, 4 gracefully turned and tapered legs with unusual splay ending in button feet. Formally a part of the Dr. Fussenick (sic) Collection, Torrington, Connecticut. Similar table illustrated Figure #1240, Nutting’s Furniture Treasury, Vol. 1. and in red ink 43.2.17.

Height 24 3/4 in. by Width 34 1/4 in. by Depth 28 in.

Frederick W. Fuessenich (1886-1973), Torrington and Litchfield, Connecticut;
Charles Milton Davenport (1871-1943), Boston, Massachusetts;
Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts;
Sotheby's, New York, Important Americana, October 10, 2002, lot 248;
Private New York Collection;
Sotheby’s, New York, Americana, October 7, 2006, lot 317.

Karl E. Weston, "American Furniture at Williams College," Magazine Antiques, (February 1944), p. 74, fig. 3.

This remarkable tea table’s closest cognates are with early Baroque tables made in or around Portsmouth, New Hampshire (see Francis Gruber Safford, American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vol. I, Early Colonial Period: The Seventeenth Century and William and Mary Styles, (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007), pp. 138-40, no. 55). The splay of the legs and shaping of the rails relate directly to the tables. A table that descended Davies family of Hampstead, New Hampshire was in the once in the Bertram and Nina Fletcher Little collection and now at Historic New England has nearly identical legs (acc. no. 1991.453) (see The Decorative Arts of New Hampshire: 1725-1825, (Manchester, NH: Currier Gallery of Art, 1964), p. 32, no. 30). A table with identical legs and feet is in the collection of Winterthur Museum (acc. no. 66.780) (see Nancy E. Richards and Nancy Goyne Evans, New England Furniture at Winterthur: Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods, (Winterthur, DE: Winterthur Museum, 1997), p. 220, no. 109). It was ascribed to coastal Connecticut or New York but may actually be a New Hampshire product. Another very similar table was advertised by Nathan Liverant and Son Antiques was attributed to Connecticut (see Magazine Antiques, vol. 143, no. 1, (January 1993), p. 81).