A CLASSICAL BRASS-INLAID CARVED MAHOGANY OCTAGONAL-TOP CANDLESTAND

Stylistic features relate this table to the work of Duncan Phyfe (1770-1854) including the reeded drum, cross-banded brass-inlaid border, incised reeded legs and lion's-paw carved feet. The reeded drum appears on a bedstead Phyfe made for his daughter Eliza Vail (1801-1868) (Nancy McClelland, Duncan Phyfe and The English Regency: 1795-1830 (New York, 1939), pl. 114). This design also appears on a card table and a breakfast table made by Phyfe for James Lefferts Brinkerhoff (1802-1868) in 1816 (Jeanne Vibert Sloane, "A Duncan Phyfe bill and the furniture it documents" The Magazine Antiques (May 1987), figs. 4, 6). The cross-banded brass-inlaid boarder also is present on a pair of card tables Phyfe made on commission for the Bronson Family of Charleston, South Carolina (Sold, Christie's, New York, The Ronald S. Kane Collection, 22 January 1994, lot 379). Further, a labeled sewing table at the Winterthur Museum exhibits identical incised reeded legs and carved feet (Charles F. Montgomery, American Furniture: The Federal Period in the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum (New York, 1966), fig. 406).

A nearly identical table is in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum (Helen Comstock, American Furniture: Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Styles (Exton, Pennsylvania, 1963), fig. 590) and a related table with a reeded drum, cross-banded edge, reeded legs and paw feet is illustrated in Israel Sack Inc., American Antiques from Israel Sack Collection, vol. VII, (New York, 1983), p. 1737, P4868.