The tea table sat unused for decades in a dining room, just one of a number of pieces of traditional furniture in an old family house near Philadelphia. How it came to be featured in a forthcoming Americana sale at Christie’s, estimated to sell for $2 million to $3 million, is a tale in itself.

The previously unknown Philadelphia carved mahogany tilt-top tea table from about 1760 is “very near the top,” said Alan T. Miller, a Pennsylvania consultant to Americana collectors and an authority on the artisans of the pre-Revolutionary period.


“It makes your heart beat faster,” said John Hays, a longtime Americana expert at Christie’s who three years ago sold a Philadelphia tea table by the same carver from Stratford Hall Plantation in Virginia. “This table has the extra advantage of being more thoroughly carved than the Stratford table, and has the asset of retaining its original surface. It’s over the top.”

The deep carving on the scalloped edges of the table’s piecrust top and on the pedestal and base is attributed to the so-called Garvan carver. Because the identity of this 18th-century Philadelphia craftsman remains a mystery, historians have named him after a high chest in the Garvan collection at the Yale University Art Gallery.

“He’s known for the boldness and vigor of his deep carving,” Mr. Hays said. “Certain strokes, like the way he carves the end of a leaf to look like a first baseman’s glove, are uniquely, distinctly his.”

Other telltale signs: the deeply carved convex molding on the canopy over the urn, the opposing C-scrolls with trefoils atop the knees, the “rope” encircling the baluster, the jewel-like cabochons or oval discs, the intaglio floral carving and the cluster of acanthus leaves that ends in a single, overturned leaf tip.

“In the 18th century you paid for each additional carved element: pad feet, knee carving, scalloped edges,” Mr. Hays said. “It’s like paying for extras when you buy a new car.”

The table is a classic Rococo design, whether it’s open (when flipped up) or closed. “Philadelphia furniture is all about the synergy between carving and form,” Mr. Hays said. “This design stands as the most successful of the renowned Philadelphia form.”

Mr. Miller added: “These tables are extremely sculptural. They give a feeling of dancing in space.”

Though the top is both warped and cracked, the 29.5-inch-tall table retains its original (read: crusty, super-valuable) surface, probably because it has been in the same Philadelphia family for 250 years.

“It was made in Philadelphia and has always remained here; it’s from my great-great-great-great-great grandparents,” said the consignor, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for her family’s privacy. “The table just sat there in the dining room, where we ate every single night. My parents didn’t use it even during dinner parties. I had no idea it was significant. We had a whole house full of traditional furniture.”

Researchers at Christie’s say the table was probably originally bought or commissioned in Philadelphia by a member of the Fisher, Fox, Pleasants or Wharton family, since it was passed down to William Wharton Fisher and his wife, Mary Pleasants Fox, in the early 1800s. A mahogany tea table is listed in the inventory of Fisher’s ancestor, William Fisher, a member of the Quaker mercantile elite who was elected mayor of Philadelphia in 1773.

In recent years the table has resided at the family’s house on the Main Line. When the consignor and her siblings went to sell the house and the table, they asked John Hook, chairman of the trusts and estates department at the Philadelphia law firm Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young, to oversee the dispersion of its contents.

“We divided the furnishings into three categories: what should be left in the house to stage it for the sale, what should go to storage and what should be sold as junk,” Mr. Hook said.

He asked a man from a local auction house to look at the “junk.” By coincidence he arrived on the appointed day with an appraiser.

Mr. Hook recalled: “Because I didn’t want anyone slowing down the process, I got annoyed when the appraiser told me: ‘This is a pretty revolutionary piecrust table. It could be worth as much as the real estate.’ I said, ‘The house is worth three-quarters of a million dollars.’ He looked up and said, ‘So is this table.’ A chill went up my spine.”

The appraiser didn’t even ask for the commission. “He told me, ‘You need to involve a national auction house,’ ” Mr. Hook said.

Events then moved quickly. After Mr. Hook contacted them, Sotheby’s and Christie’s immediately sent experts to see the table on different days of the same week. Mr. Hook told them the consignor would choose the auction house by the Saturday of that week.

“When they told us how significant the table was, leaving it in the house seemed irresponsible,” the consignor said.

Mr. Hook added: “It was too much of a liability. If the house had burned down, at that point we didn’t have enough insurance to cover the value of the table. We wanted to get it out as soon as possible.”

That Friday evening, as he was about to have dinner with the consignor at the Merion Cricket Club, Mr. Hook learned she had chosen Christie’s.

Then the phone rang, and it was Mr. Hays. He said that he and a Christie’s colleague, Martha Willoughby, were five minutes away, sitting in an Escalade limousine. The two joined Mr. Hook and the consigner at dinner to discuss the sale and then returned to the house. “While John and I finished the terms of the agreement at the dining room table,” Mr. Hook said, “they wrapped up the tea table. It had taken on a life of its own. They were taking care of it like a baby.”

By 10 p.m. the contracts were signed, ending in hours a process that could have taken weeks. The tea table was secured in the limousine, and the Christie’s team drove off. The table is now scheduled for the Oct. 3 Americana sale.

The consignor is thoughtful about the table. “I would love to have heard some of the conversations that took place around this table in pre-Revolutionary Philadelphia,” she said.

Mr. Hays agreed: “It was around tea tables like this where the elite met in the 1760s to discuss whether there was going to be a revolution. Just think about the decisions they were making.”

More Articles in Arts »