Federal Figured Mahogany Card Table

Object Details

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Federal Figured Mahogany Card Table

Shaw, John
1793

wood; mahogany; yellow-poplar; eastern white pine; white oak

Object Essay

John Shaw is the most famous name in Maryland cabinetmaking of the eighteenth century. His renown has two principal causes. First, contrary to the practice of the vast majority of American cabinetmakers, he chose to label much (if not all) of the furniture produced in his Annapolis shop; thus, Shaw’s work can be readily identified. Second, his fame was assured by his obtaining a large number of contracts from the State of Maryland to furnish major public buildings. Due to their important histories, many of these unusual documented pieces have survived. 

Shaw came to Annapolis from Glasgow, Scotland, in 1763, when the town was in its heyday as the cultural and political center of the colony. Working as a journeyman by 1768 and independently by 1770, he was in partnership with Archibald Chisholm from 1772 to 1776. Shaw’s commissions for the Maryland State House began in 1775, and he was the armorer for the State of Maryland during the Revolution. He was most successful, however, when he was in business on his own in the 1790s, the period of the greatest number of his labeled pieces and his extensive commissions for the Maryland State House, including the furnishings for the Senate Chamber and the Governor’s Council Chamber. 

This handsome but simple early Federal-period card table^{1_{For comprehensive information on Shaw, see Elder and Bartlett, no. 18. The table is recorded in Hewitt et al., no. 372.}} bears one of Shaw’s standard labels, engraved by the Annapolis silversmith Thomas Sparrow (born 1746; working 1764–1788) and dated 1790 in ink.^{2_{The engraved paper label on the swing leg reads “JOHN SHAW,/ CABINETMAKER,/ ANNAPOLIS./ 1790” (date in ink).}} The table is identical to another labeled example in its three distinctive sections of figured mahogany veneers across the apron and the characteristic rounded molding of the edges of the top and the bottom of the apron.^{3_{See Elder and Bartlett, 80ff. A virtually identical table (cat. no. 19) is at the Hammond-Harwood House, Annapolis.}} In partnership with Chisholm, Shaw made tables of this sort as early as the mid–1770s; this table is typical of Shaw in its conservatism. 

This table descended in the Washington family. It was owned by the donor’s grandmother, Lucy Washington (Mrs. William Bainbridge Packette), at Harewood, Jefferson County, West Virginia; she inherited it from her parents, George Steptoe Washington (about 1770–1809) and Lucy Payne, a sister of Dolley Payne Todd (Mrs. James Madison). The Washingtons had married about 1790, so perhaps the table was a wedding present. George Steptoe Washington inherited Harewood, built in 1771, from his father, Samuel Washington (1734–1781), a brother of the first president. 

Gregory R. Weidman

Excerpted from Jonathan L. Fairbanks. Becoming a Nation: Americana from the Diplomatic Reception Rooms, U.S. Department of State. New York: Rizzoli, 2003.