Rhode Island gateleg tables

Magazine Antiques, May, 2004 by Erik K. Gronning, Dennis Carr

Introduced to America during the last quarter of the seventeenth century, gateleg tables offered portability that was ideal for the small rooms typical of many colonial houses. Purely baroque in form, gateleg tables consistently have oval tops and were called "oval tables" in contemporary wills and inventories. The oval shape provided a relaxed and democratic dining experience.

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The origin of the gateleg table is difficult to pinpoint. Robert F. Trent has suggested that the form originated in France at the Chateau de Versailles in the 1660s as a result of cramped living accommodations in the palace. (1) Victor Chinnery has described it as a logical progression from joined folding tables in Britain. (2) Whatever the source, gateleg tables became fashionable throughout the colonies during the first half of the eighteenth century.

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Rhode Island gateleg tables differ greatly from their counterparts in other regions of New England (compare for example Pls. II and IV). While the turned legs of most New England gateleg tables have a central baluster-ring-baluster component, Rhode Island table legs are distinguished by their graceful asymmetry (see Pl. I). The baluster-ring-baluster has been compressed to a ball-ring-ball turning and has been shifted lower down on a delicate cylindrical shaft. Even the ball feet have elongated cylindrical necks.

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A French design book first published in 1691 and reissued several times during the first half of the eighteenth century illustrates the naturalistic basis for the baluster-ring-baluster form, with acanthus leaves curling in relief from the baluster (see Fig. 1). This baroque design, which looks like two inverted pieces of fruit, is in fact called double poire (double pear). (3)

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The basic design of the double-pear turning separated by a ring was a standard part of the repertory of the early eighteenth-century turner and is actually quite common in early American furniture, specifically in the legs of tables and the front stretchers of chairs. Boston was producing leather-back chairs during this period with very bold ball-ring-ball turned front stretchers. In fact, for many years furniture scholars believed that one style of this chair (see Pl. III) was produced in Rhode Island. However, recent research has refuted this claim and illustrated that many early eighteenth-century chairs with Rhode Island histories were probably exported from Boston. (4)

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Why Rhode Island furniture makers chose to compress the baluster shape to a round shape is still unclear. Was it an evolution in the turner's craft? Were imported Boston chairs a source of inspiration? Or could the ball be based on a design published in a sixteenth-and/or early seventeenth-century French or Italian design book rooted in classicism? At the moment we do not know. As Patricia E. Kane has aptly written, by the mid-1700s Rhode Island residents had clearly

embraced the [academic] classical style, as an affirmation of their
position as educated individuals who were aware of the noble models
provided by the ancient world and the qualities of temperance,
stateliness, and harmony denoted by them. (5)

The Rhode Island gateleg table may represent the burgeoning of the classical taste in the colony.

Frances Clary Morse was the first to publish an example of a Rhode Island gateleg table (in 1902), although at the time nothing was known of its origin. (6) Currently only two tables are known with a Rhode Island provenance (Figs. 3, 5). The one in Figure 5 reputedly descended in the Easton family of Newport and was acquired by Cornelius C. Moore (1885-1970), who placed it on loan to the Redwood Library in Newport. It has since been sold, and today its whereabouts is unknown. (7) The other table descended in the Alden-Southworth-Cooke families of Little Compton and Newport, and for some time was in the Mawdsley-Gardner-Watson-Pitman house in Newport. (8)

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A Rhode Island provenance is not in itself enough to attribute the tables to Rhode Island. However, Luke Beckerdite points out that the walnut balusters on the stairway in the Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House in Newport (see Fig. 2) bear a remarkable visual similarity to the turnings on the gateleg tables. Beckerdite suggests that Christopher Townsend (1701-1787), a Newport cabinetmaker, was responsible for the woodwork in the meetinghouse. (9) The presence of these turned balusters substantiates the association of these gateleg tables with Rhode Island. Furthermore, a large number of other objects made in Rhode Island exhibit similar asymmetrical turnings, attesting to the popularity and longevity of the design in the region (see Pls. V, VI).

Of the Rhode Island gateleg tables currently known, the one owned by the firm of Bernard and S. Dean Levy in New York City is the largest example and the only one made primarily of walnut (Pl. II). All the other known tables are made of maple. During the first quarter of the eighteenth century, walnut was an expensive wood, since it was imported from the southern colonies. The turnings on the table in Plate II are the most complex of the known examples (see Pl. I). The turning begins with a simple half round with fillet smoothly transformed into a column enhanced by two different ring turnings. The ring nearest to the skirt is large and asymmetrical with a fillet below the ovulo turning. The second ring turning, further down, is symmetrical with a fillet above and a smaller ovulo turning. The column is supported by two nearly spherical ball turnings between which is an asymmetrical ring turning. The top half of the ring is slightly more embellished and there is a sharp transition below the first ball. The turner chose to make a smooth transition into the second ball and then finished with an ovulo turning immediately before the block. The curvilinear and asymmetrical attributes of the turning exemplify the baroque style.