Handcrafted Queen Anne-Style Tea Table With Bird's Eye Maple Top

Details

Description

A Queen Anne-style tea table, made by a Southern California craftsman with a bird's eye maple top on a sugar … Read more A Queen Anne-style tea table, made by a Southern California craftsman with a bird's eye maple top on a sugar pine base, every joint cut by hand.

The top is a panel of bird's eye maple, its surface scattered with the small swirling "eyes" that give the figure its name, set over a sugar pine base with gracefully curved Queen Anne cabriole legs ending in pad feet.

ABOUT THE STYLE
In the early 1700s, tea became the fashionable drink of Britain and its colonies, and a new piece of furniture followed: the tea table, light enough to move and sized for serving. Queen Anne-era makers perfected the form, and antique Queen Anne tea tables remain among the most sought-after pieces of early American furniture. Search "antique Queen Anne tea table" and you will see the same proportions and leg work.

THE WOODS
Bird's eye figure appears in only a small fraction of maple trees, and its exact cause is still debated, so it cannot be predicted or grown on purpose. It has been prized for fine furniture for more than two centuries. Sugar pine, the tallest pine species in the world, is native to the mountains of California and Oregon.

FOR THE COLLECTOR
The name "Queen Anne" was applied by collectors long after the fact; in America the style flourished from roughly the 1720s to the 1760s, centered in Boston, Newport and Philadelphia. Tea tables were among the most fashionable forms of the period, a sign that a household could afford both the furniture and the costly imported tea. Pairing a rare figured top with a contrasting base is a classic cabinetmaker's way of making a small table the focal point of a room.

AN HEIRLOOM AND A FUTURE ANTIQUE
Built by hand with traditional joinery, this table is made to be refinished and passed down rather than replaced. Handcrafted, one of a kind and made in America, it will increase in value over time as it becomes a true antique.

DIMENSIONS: 30.5" W x 20.5" D x 26.5" H
MATERIALS: Bird's eye maple top; sugar pine base
MADE IN: Southern California, USA
DELIVERY: Available to the San Diego and Los Angeles areas. Message to arrange. See less