A Pair of Classical Games Tables

Richmond, Virginia
Circa 1820

This handsome pair of Classical games tables likely originated in one of the best cabinet shops in Richmond. The beautiful mahogany tops have canted front corners that are repeated in the crotch-mahogany veneered aprons. Buhl-work brass panels inlayed into rosewood center the fronts of the aprons. The ring turned standards are raised on reeded sabre legs ending in gilt-lacquered brass toe-caps and casters. The Richard H. Jenrette Foundation exhibits a Duncan Phyfe attributed Grecian couch and a sofa with identical buhl-work panels but with the brass and rosewood reversed at Edgewater on the Hudson River. Those pieces are illustrated in the book, Duncan Phyfe Master Cabinetmaker in New York, on page 131, Figure 165 and page 212, Plate 35. In 2006, this pair of tables sold at the impressive sale of furniture from Hickory Hill Plantation in Ashland, Virginia. A label under one of the tables specifies MESDA research file S-6837. Family history indicates these tables descended in the Barksdale family of Clay Hill, Amelia County, Virginia. It mentions that Henry Taylor Wickham, son of General Williams Carter Wickham, married Elise W. Wickham.

https://mesda.org/item/object/table-card/12641/

Mahogany, (Secondary wood: poplar)
Height: 29” Width: 36” Depth: 18”
C1089