American Furniture, Folk and Decorative Arts

Fitted with side drawers, retains orginal drawer hardware and two original brackets.

Provenance

Probable line of descent:

James Pemberton (1723-1809) and Phoebe Lewis Morton (1737-1812) who married in 1775; to Pemberton's daughter Mary Smith Pemberton (1770-1808) who married Anthony Morris (1766-1860) in 1790; to their son, James Pemberton Morris (1795-1834) who married Louisa Gardiner (1800-1828) in 1817; to their son Phineas Pemberton Morris (1817-1888) who married Martha Curry Price in 1855 and died without issue. Phineas B. Morris willed his estate of cousin, Effingham Buckley Morris (1856-1937) and Ellen Douglas Burroughs Morris (1853-1925); thence to their daughter Eleanor Burroughs Morris Lloyd (later Thacher, 1881-1981) and Stacy Bancroft Lloyd (1876-1986); to their son Morris Lloyd (1913-1986) and Hope Starr Lloyd (1914-2006); to their son John Strawbridge Lloyd (1951-2020).

Loan and Exhibition History

The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, 2006 to 2021.

Literature

Elizabeth Stillinger, "Living with Antiques: The Chestnut Hill Home of Mrs. Thomas D. Thacher," The Magazine Antiques, April, 1967, pg. 505.
William MacPherson Hornor, Jr., Blue Book, Philadelphia Furniture (1935) illustration, Pl. 264, and commentary, pg. 183, 185.

Note

The original owner of this sideboard table was probably James Pemberton (1723-1809), a well-traveled and wealthy Quaker merchant, landowner, philanthropist and abolitionist. Pemberton supported the rights of Native Americans and helped found the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. Upon the death of his father, Israel Pemberton (1684-1754), James Pemberton inherited several homes and extensive property in Philadelphia along with "Bolton Farms" in Bucks County. His town house was on Second Street next door to his cousins', William Logan and Hannah Emlen Logan. Pemberton married three times and this sideboard table may have been purchased at the time of his third marriage to Phoebe Lewis Morton (1737 -1812) in 1775.

The sideboard table was a fashionable English furniture form introduced to Philadelphia by English furniture/ architecture publications and by the London-trained joiners and cabinet-makers who immigrated to the city in the second half of the 18th century. The form was versatile, providing extra space and food display in the dining room, as well as storage and surface area in the drawing rooms and hallways. Sideboard tables appear in the 1772 Philadelphia book: Prices of Cabinet and Chair Work.

Alexandra A. Kirtley, The Montgomery-Garvan Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art has written about this table. "The design of this sidboard table was derived from a type illlustrated in the third edition of Thomas Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinet-maker's Director (1763), a progression from the plainer marble-topped examples illustrated in the first edition (1754). The design of the later sideboard tables conformed to the new aesthetic for lighter, daintier profiles, with the result that, as Chippendale explained, "the Tops will be better works of Wood."

The elegant design and execution of this table was first recognized by William Macpherson Hornor, Jr., Blue Book Philadelphia Furniture (1935), illustrated as Pl. 264, with the editorial comment, "It is the Acme of Perfection." He added, "The magnificent Affleck-Pemberton-Morris sideboard table is of great consequence, since it carried the carved gadroon moulding on the frame in addition to an ingenious garland of flowers and rococo leaves to outline the mahogany slab...The scrolled brackets soften the serpentine facade." Hornor supported the attribution to Thomas Affleck by noting that James Pemberton ordered a number of pieces of furniture from the maker in 1775, including: the "campanion" card or side table, Pl. 265; a "Mahoganny Bedstead with fluted pillers"; "3 Setts Cedar Bed Cornices"; and "12 Mahoganny Chair Frames," Pl. 266, February 10; and "2 Mahoganny Elbow chairs," on June 16th. He also noted that Pemberton ordered "a read cedar carying tray," from William Savery, June 10, 1775.

Thomas Affleck and James Pemberton were among the twenty Quaker community leaders exiled from Philadelphia to Winchester, Virginia in 1777, for opposing the war for independence and for refusing to recognize the revolutionary government. The survivors of the ordeal returned to Philadelphia without trial eight months later.

Two closely related sideboard tables are known to exist. One was sold at Christie's, Property from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. E.J. Nusrala, January 20th, 2006, Lot 686; and the second, sold at Sotheby's, The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Walter M. Jeffords, October 28, 2004, Lot 287. Unlike the present lot, both examples had been reduced in height.

The Nusrala Collection sidetable, though longer, is nearly identical to the present lot in design, scale and construction; as Hornor commented, it is "nearly the mate." The furniture scholar Alan Miller noted that the similarity in wood grain between these two tables suggests that they were made from continous boards, possibly as part of the same commission to fit in different spaces within a house or for two closely connected patrons.