Description: Oval drop-leaf table with highly-figured maple top and leaves embellished with an over-all coat of black paint-stain that was stripped off in the 1980s. Similar in design to a cherry table owned by Henry King Hoyt (1810-1863) and Catherine Wells Hoyt (1805-1891), now in the collection of Memorial Hall Museum, this table descended in the Hawks family of Deerfield. It is attributed to Benjamin Munn III (1738-1824) or Francis Munn (1743-1818). Interior board is white pine, and under the top where an old hinge was once applied is cherry, the legs and apron are red maple.
Label Text: Popular throughout the American colonies beginning in the 1720s, drop-leaf tables could be pulled up to a sunny window or warm hearth to serve a variety of purposes, and tucked against a wall, out of the way, when not in use. Priced according to length (sometimes called “three-foot table,” or “four-foot table” in shop records) one cabinetmaker , Samuel Gaylord Jr. (1742-1816) of Hadley, referred to them by shape, simply as “round table” or “square leaf table.” Gaylord’s shop accounts show that his most popular table was the drop-leaf table. Between 1764 and 1793, he recorded nearly equal number of orders for each shape: 39 “round leaf” tables and 40 “square leaf” tables (in one case more precisely noting the square table’s main function: “Square Table, Large, to Dine on”).
Provenance: With its shaped skirts fashioned from an applied, cut-out strip and cabriole legs ending in pad feet, this table’s design is characteristic of Deerfield work and is nearly identical to other examples with histories of ownership in town. A member of the Munn family of woodworkers, either Benjamin Munn III (1738-1824) or his cousin, Francis Munn (1743-1818), probably made it for Paul Hawks (1736-1819) and Lois Wait Hawks (d. 1810) of Deerfield. It descended in the Hawks family until acquired by Historic Deerfield and may have been among the original furnishings of their 1764 house at Wapping, a small village just south of Deerfield.
Link to share this object record: https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2011.14.3 |