VERY FINE AND RARE CHIPPENDALE CARVED MAHOGANY GAMES TABLE, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, CIRCA 1760

Christie's New York, Important American Furniture, Silver, Prints, Folk Art and Decorative Arts, January 22, 1994, sale 7820, lot 288;

Leigh Keno American Antiques, New York.

This card table is distinguished by its small size and fine carving to the knees and returns. A slightly larger, related card table features shell carved knees but offers single pendant husks (see Sotheby's, New York, Important American Furniture and Folk Art, October 14, 1989, sale 5905, lot 321). The carving to the returns, the rather straight cabriole legs, and the shape of the claw-and-ball feet also appear on a high chest of drawers (see Leigh Keno American Antiques advertisement, Magazine Antiques, May 1994, p. 619). The carved legs are similar to designs by the Boston carver John Welch, an artisan who carved numerous picture frames for John Singleton Copley and who had several important architectural carving commissions. For an example of Welch's carving, see Alan Miller "Roman Gusto in New England: An Eighteenth-Century Boston Furniture Designer and His Shop", American Furniture, ed. Luke Beckerdite, (Hanover, NH, Chipstone Foundation, 1993), p. 170, figs. 11 and 12. Comparisons of the carving on this table and on Welsh's architectural work however do not warrant an attribution to Welsh for the present table.