Rhode Island gateleg tables

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

(3) This motif as it pertains to seating furniture is discussed in Benno M. Forman, American Seating Furniture: 1630-1730: An Interpretive Catalogue (W. W. Norton, New York, 1988), p. 226.

(4) For more about these Boston leather-backed chairs, see Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque, American Furniture at Chipstone (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1984), pp. 112-113; Barry A. Greenlaw, New England Furniture at Williamsburg (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1974), pp. 100-101; Joan Barzilay Freund and Leigh Keno, "The Making and Marketing of Boston Seating Furniture in the Late Baroque Style," in American Furniture 1998, ed. Luke Beckerdite (1998), pp. 1-40.

(5) Patricia E. Kane, "The Palladian Style in Rhode Island Furniture: Fly Tea Tables," American Furniture 1999, ed. Luke Beckerdite (1999), pp. 6-8.

(6) Frances Clary Morse, Furniture of the Olden Time (Macmillan Company, New York, 1902), p. 224.

(7) Robert F. Trent, "New Insights on Early Rhode Island Furniture," in American Furniture 1999, pp. 220-221.

(8) Conversation with a private collector and Bertram Lippincott III on May 19, 1996. See also the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, November 25, 1965, p. B-73; and Antoinette F. Downing and Vincent J. Scully Jr., The Architectural Heritage of Newport Rhode Island 1640-1915 (Bramhall House, New York, 1967), p. 456.

(9) Luke Beckerdite, "The Early Furniture of Christopher and Job Townsend," American Furniture 2000, ed. Luke Beckerdite (2000), pp. 4 and 7-10.

(10) For this table, see Ruth Davidson, "Living with antiques: The Connecticut home of Mrs. C. McGregory Wells Jr.," The Magazine ANTIQUES, vol. 81, no. 1 (January 1962), pp. 101-103; and Important Americana: The Collection of Dr. and Mrs. Henry P. Deyerle, Sotheby's, Charlottesville, Virginia, May 26-27, 1995, Lot 372.

ERIK K. GRONNING is a dealer, consultant, and scholar in the field of antique American decorative arts.

DENNIS CARR is a doctoral candidate in the history of art at Yale University and is contributing to a study of Rhode Island furniture making conducted by Patricia E. Kane.