Rhode Island Furniture Archive - Yale University Art Gallery

Photo: Courtesy Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library, Del., 1959.2648 Click the image to enlarge	Tilt-top table
	Object number RIF646
	Maker Maker Unknown
	Dimensions Height: 28 1/4 in. (71.76 cm) Top: 33 � 32 1/4 in. (83.82 � 81.92 cm) Width, feet: 20 1/4 in. (51.44 cm)
	Date 1750–80
	Current location Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library
	Geography Probably made in Rhode Island (view a map of Rhode Island)
	Medium Mahogany (top, cabinet sides, drawer dividers, and drawer fronts, sides, and backs); astronium sp. [Goncalo alves] (legs); West Indies satinwood (columns); tropical hardwood (cleats); red cedar (original drawer backs)
	Marks None
	Inscriptions "M.A. [Nor]ton / Loan," written in pencil, and "286.26," written in red crayon, on a red-bordered label, affixed to inside front of top drawer
	Provenance By descent in the Davis family, Plantsville, Connecticut. Malcom A. Norton, Hartford, Connecticut; by descent to his son-in-law Walter A. Crabtree, before 1932; sold to Henry Francis du Pont (1880–1969), Winterthur, Delaware, 1932; given to Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library, Delaware, 1960
	Associated names Davis family Malcolm A. Norton Walter A. Crabtree Henry Francis du Pont
	Construction The tabletop is made of a wide board pieced at one side with a 6 3/4" strip cut from the same log. The molded rim is cut from solid wood, and there is an incised bead on the lower outside surface of the edge. The top tilts vertically. A pair of trapezoidal-shape cleats, rounded on the ends and bottom, are screwed to the underside of the top. Between them is a thick triangular block with round tenons that forms the plate for the enclosed, slightly concave-sided triangular cabinet. The three-quarter full columns at each corner are screwed to the block from the top and rest on the platform. Behind each of the front columns there are full-length triangular blocks to which the framing for the door is nailed. Beaded on two edges, a hinged door, cut slightly shorter than the sides to clear the cleats, opens to reveal a series of five graduated triangular drawers. The drawer fronts are cut in a concave block; the sides are nailed to rabbets in the front and across the back; the bottoms, rabbeted at the front, are nailed over the sides and back. The raised, thumbnail-molded panels on the sides of the platform are cut from solid wood and are shaped on the lower edge. The legs are dovetailed to the platform below, the joints covered with a Y-shape iron brace held with modern screws. Source: Nancy E. Richards and Nancy Goyne Evans, New England Furniture at Winterthur, (Winterthur, Del.: Winterthur Publications, 1997), 279.
	Notes Mahogany: top, cabinet sides, platform, drawer fronts, sides, bottoms, and blades between drawers Astronium [goncalo alves]: legs Satinwood: columns Tropical hardwood: cleats red cedar: drawerbacks
	See also RIF406 RIF484 RIF508 RIF5751 RIF5752 RIF6153
	Bibliography Nancy E. Richards and Nancy Goyne Evans, New England Furniture at Winterthur: Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods (Winterthur, Del.: Winterthur Publications, 1997), 278–79, no. 147, ill. Sarah Neale Fayen, "Tilt-Top Tables and Eighteenth-Century Consumerism," American Furniture (2003): 120, fig. 36. Wallace Nutting, Furniture Treasury (New York: MacMillan Company, 1963), no. 1314, ill. Joseph Downs, American Furniture: Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods in the Henry Francis DuPont Winterthur Museum (New York: MacMillan Company, 1952), no. 384, ill. Malcolm A. Norton, "The Cabinet Pedestal Table," Antiques 4, no. 4 (November 1923): 224–25, fig. 2. Patricia E. Kane et al., Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650–1830, exh. cat. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2016), 327n1.