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Photo: Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 10.125.327
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Joint stool or table

Object number

RIF4141

Maker

Maker Unknown

Dimensions

Height, overall: 21 1/2 in. (54.61 cm) Width, top: 26 in. (66.04 cm) Depth, top: 14 3/4 in. (37.465 cm) Width, frame: 20 in. (50.8 cm) Depth, frame at top: 11 1/4 in. (28.575 cm) Depth, frame at feet: 18 in. (45.72 cm)

Date

1720–50

Current location

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Geography

Made in Rhode Island
(view a map of Rhode Island)

Medium

Soft maple

Inscriptions

A printed paper label that came loose from the underside of the top reads: "Included in the collection of Antique Furni-/ture transferred to Mr. H.E. Bolles, and Mr. / Geo. S. Palmer." It is inscribed in ink (script) at the top "Spread Leg table." and signed in ink at the bottom "Walter Hosmer." A small paper sticker with the printed number 187 is on the underside of one corner of the top. Modern restorer's reassembly marks (roman numerals) are incised in some of the rails, stretchers, and legs.

Style

William and Mary

Provenance

Walter Hosmer, Hartford, Connecticut; sold to H. Eugene Bolles (1838–1910), Boston, Massachusetts, 1894; sold to Mrs. Russell Sage, New York, 1909; given to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Associated names

Walter Hosmer
H. Eugene Bolles
George Smith Palmer

Construction

The frame, secured with standard mortise-and-tenon joints, has legs that are strongly splayed in two opposite directions (about 9 degrees from the vertical). The outer corner of each leg block has been finished with a small chamfer. There are variations in thickness between and within the individual rails and stretchers. Evidence of mill sawing remains on the inner side of three of the rails. Source: Frances Gruber Safford, American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, (New York, N.Y.: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007), 134.

Bibliography

Herman Hjorth, "Early American Furniture," Science and Mechanics (April 1946): fig. 11.
Irving W. Lyon, The Colonial Furniture of New England: A Study of the Domestic Furniture in Use in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1891), 201, fig. 102.
Frances Gruber Safford, American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1. Early Colonial Period, The Seventeenth-Century and William and Mary Styles (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007), 134–135, no. 52, ill.
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), 31n53, 181n1.