Dining Table
Eastern Virginia, 1700-1730
Black walnut
Catalog no. 56

This table and similar examples from the coastal South follow British prototypes. Ball-and-ring turnings like those seen here appear on many seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century British tables, chairs, benches, and stools.

Structural and design details on this table mirror other tables made in eastern Virginia. The distinctive flared division between the balls and rings on the legs may represent a specific regional turning tradition. The legs of a gateleg table that descended in a family from Westmoreland County on the Northern Neck of Virginia displays a similar detail. Closely related baluster turnings survive on architectural fittings at the circa 1706 Yeocomico Church in the same county. The relationship of this table to the Northern Neck examples supports a tentative attribution to that area.