Rhode Island Furniture Archive - Yale University Art Gallery

Photo: Courtesy private collection; photo by Anthony De Camillo Click the image to enlarge	Card table
	Object number RIF1414
	Maker Maker, attributed to John Townsend, American, 1732/33–1809
	Dimensions Closed: 28 1/4 � 36 � 17 3/4 in. (71.76 � 91.44 � 45.09 cm)
	Date 1795–1805
	Current location Private Collection
	Geography Made in Newport, Rhode Island (view a map of Rhode Island)
	Medium Mahogany and light wood inlay (primary); white pine and maple (secondary)
	Marks None
	Inscriptions "M," in graphite, on exterior of hinged rail
	Provenance Bernard and S. Dean Levy, Inc., New York, 1995; sold to a private collection, 2011
	Associated names Bernard and S. Dean Levy, Inc.
	Construction The single-board, half round lower leaf is joined to its conformingly shaped top leaf by two pairs of brass screws set into the rear corners of each leaf edge. Neither leaf is inlaid. The top is secured to its frame by six screw pockets ? one each near the end of the inside face of the interior rear rail, two each inside the central front rail, and one each in the flanking front rails. The front rails consist of four horizontal laminations, held together in part by nails and screws in the underside of the bottom laminations. In the back of the proper right front leg are two screws; the proper left front leg has one. There are two leaf-edge joints, each consisting of a tenon on the rear edge of the top leaf and a mortise on the bottom leaf. Vertical trapezoidal glue blocks occupy the inside rear corners of the frame. The interior rear rail is fixed by four rosehead nails to the short central portion of the exterior rear rail. The interior rail is joined to each end of the front rail by dovetail joints, having finely cut, narrow-necked pins with half-pins above and below. The two rear legs swing by means of round, five-knuckled, carved wood hinges. The swinging rails are tenoned and double-wood-pinned to the rabbeted top of the rear legs, which, when closed, are ressaulted in the same manner on the front legs. All four are ?bookend?-inlaid at the top, flower- and line-inlaid on their outside faces only and cuff-inlaid on all four faces. Photographs courtesy of private collection; photographs by Anthony de Camillo.
	See also RIF698 RIF1361
	Bibliography "Bernard and S. Dean Levy, Inc., advertisement," Antiques 148, no. 3 (September 1995): 209, ill. Morrison H. Heckscher, John Townsend: Newport Cabinetmaker, exh. cat. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005), Not illustrated, referred to on p.168 as nearly identical to Cat. 42 [RIF698]; nearly identical to matching table of pair [RIF1361]. 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), 4, 406–9, no. 94, fig. 2–4.