A CLASSICAL MARBLE-INSET MAHOGANY WORK TABLE

With its graceful columns, curved corners and shaped platform base this work table exhibits features favored by New York's renowned cabinetmaker Duncan Phyfe (1768-1854) during the 1820s. For a similar example attributed to Phyfe, see Peter Kenny and Michael Brown, Duncan Phyfe: Master Cabinetmaker in New York (New York, 2011), p. 133, fig. 168. The presence of a marble top is an uncommon feature, but is documented in the period and seen on an earlier Phyfe work table now at Winterthur Museum. As cited by Kenny and Brown, an importer of New York furniture in Savannah advertised in 1815 "Lady's elegant work Tables, with marble tops." With such a top, the work table offered here may also have been used as a mixing table or kettle stand (Kenny and Brown, pp. 174-175).