Classical Carved Card Table, Attributed to Isaac Vose & Son with Thomas Seymour
Boston, c.1820
The oblong swivel top opening to a wood playing surface above an apron with scrolled ends above a paneled, pylon-shaped pedestal with acanthus carved collar at the base. The pedestal on an abacus-shaped plinth with spooling around the top edge, raised on scrolled feet with lotus carving on the sides, with recessed caster wheels.
H: 29″ W: 36″ D: 18″
Condition: Excellent: Having been re-polished with shellac in the manner of the period.
The table is virtually identical to a Classical carved card table bearing the ink stencil of Isaac Vose and Son in the collection of the Saint Louis Museum of Art.[1] Robert Mussey and Clark Pearce, furniture historians who have studied closely the shop practices of Thomas Seymour, the Vose firm and this example, are confident in a Vose attribution.[2] An oval center table with a closely related base is available on this website.
Thomas Seymour, after closing his own shop in 1818, became the shop foreman for the firm of Vose & Son, considered then and now to be the greatest makers of Classical furniture in Boston. This elite pairing of talent produced some of the finest furniture in America of the Classical period in the Regency taste.
[1] Wendy A. Cooper, Classical Taste in America 1800-1840 (Baltimore Museum of Art, 1993), 134.
[2] Robert D. Mussey, Jr., Clark Pearce, Rather Elegant Than Showy: The Classical Furniture of Isaac Vose, (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2018).