Very Fine and Rare Pair of Chippendale Carved and Figured Mahogany Games Tables, Carving attributed to Martin Jugiez (d. 1815), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Circa 1770

Charles Woolsey Lyon, Inc., circa 1928

Edward Stratton Holloway, American Furniture and Decoration: Colonial and Federal (Philadelphia & London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1928): plate 25. One of the tables is illustrated.

The Philadelphia card tables offered here are exceedingly rare for surviving together as a pair. While other pairs of the form are known, such as the pair of Deshler family card tables (one at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and its mate that sold at Christie’s on January 21, 2016, lot 172), they rarely, if ever, remain intact as a pair over the 250 years since they were made.  

 

These tables were owned by Charles Woolsey Lyon, the New York antiquarian who served as a consultant to museums, private collectors and dealers in assembling collections of antiques. One of the tables appears illustrated as his property in plate 25 of American Furniture and Decoration: Colonial and Federal (1928) by Edward Stratton Holloway. The exceptional knee carving on the tables comprised of two pairs of opposing C-scrolls centering a C scroll with leaf carving above and below is distinctive and unusual. It closely relates to knee carving of a similar pattern and execution found on a set of side chairs owned by Richard Edwards (1744-1799) of Lumberton, Burlington County, New Jersey.  The knee carving on the Edwards Family set of chairs has been attributed by Alan Miller to Martin Jugiez (d. 1815), the highly skilled immigrant carver working in pre-Revolutionary Philadelphia. He was in partnership with Nicholas Bernard from the early 1760s and was the primary carver in their business with a fully developed working style. By 1783, Jugiez had established a separate business. For additional information on Jugiez, see Luke Beckerdite and Alan Miller, “A Table’s Tale: Crafts, Art, and Opportunity in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia, published in American Furniture, (Hanover and London: The Chipstone Foundation, 2004), pp. 2-45.

 

Four chairs, numbers I, II, III, and V of the Edwards Family set, were sold at Christie’s, Important American Furniture, Folk Art and Silver, January 19, 2018, sale 15397, lots 139 and 140. Another side chair from the set is illustrated by William MacPherson Hornor in plate 217 of Blue Book Philadelphia Furniture (Washington, D.C., 1935) as the property of Mrs. William McIntire.