Who's for a Game of Cards?

 

QUESTION: Recently, while browsing though an antique shop, I came across two tables. Both had fold-over tops. One seemed like it was from the 18th century, the other from the Empire period of the 19th. The dealer unfolded the top of the older table to reveal a green felt cloth inlaid into it. He said that this was a card table. When he unfolded the top of the second table, it had no felt inlay and was plainly finished. He told me the second table was a tea table. I always thought they were both card tables. Can you tell me the difference and when card tables started to be used?

ANSWER: There’s a difference between the two tables, although subtle. Back in the 18th century, furniture was expensive as each piece was handcrafted to suit the customer. People woud have used their card tables as tea tables by just putting a tablescloth over it. But by the 1840s, furniture had begun to be at least partially machine-made, and manufacturers kept the cost down by making card tables plainer. 

Playing cards were probably invented during the Chinese Tang Dynasty around the 9th century as a result of the usage of woodblock printing. Playing cards became a diversion both in public houses and private homes. Early playing cards had neither suits nor numbers. Instead, they had instructions or forfeits for whoever drew them. Usually, playing cards revolved around drinking alcohol, especially in the public houses.

The earliest game involving cards occurred on July 17,1294 when the Ming Department of Punishments caught two gamblers, Yan Sengzhu and Zheng Pig-Dog, playing with paper cards. The Department confiscated the wood blocks used for printing the cards together with nine of the actual cards. By the 11th century, playing cards had spread throughout Asia and eventually made their way to Egypt. Playing cards probably came to Europe from the East, arriving first in either Italy or Spain.

By the early 18th century, specially made tables for playing cards began to appear all over England. The first card tables first appeared in the American Colonies around 1710. Card tables became symbols of wealth and the consequent expansion of leisure time and soon became a social necessity in every fashionable home. Without modern entertainment devices, about the only forms of evening entertainment was playing music, dancing, and of course, playing cards. 

Cabinetmakers constructed most of these imported English card tables of mahogany or walnut. Each had a hinged two-leaf top that, when open and supported on a swing leg, revealed an inner surface lined with leather, felt, or the coarse woolen cloth called baize. Since household lighting was usually inadequate for evening play, most of the tables had four turrets projecting from the corners to accommodate candlesticks. In addition, there were often “guinea pools” or “fishponds”—shallow dishlike depressions to hold money, dice, or counters—and, in Chippendale styles, a single drawer in which to keep the cards. The tables stood on graceful cabriole legs, meant to resemble a woman’s shapely calves, but their backs, unseen against the wall, remained unfinished.

Since so many of these tables were highly decorative and also bore their makers’ marks, they provide valuable evidence of the varieties of carving, inlay, veneer, and other detail used by the cabinetmakers, as well as of regional characteristics. Tables with bowed fronts were popular in Boston and Salem, and five- and six-legged examples appeared in New York.

Some people used card tables for purposes other than for playing cards. Unfortunately, tablecloths only covered over the fishponds, often causing accidents and breakage.

In Puritan New England and Quaker Philadelphia, as well as in the South, people bet huge sums on cockfights and horse races, on bull and bearbaiting. Doctors and lawyers would wager their fees at the card table, and the “devil’s prayer book”—a deck of playing cards—could be found everywhere.

From the beginning of the United States, gambling overpowered every effort to restrain it. By the late 18th century every fashionable home had a card table. Still, most households reserved the card table for recreational use.

In the upper-class 18th-century American home, ladies played cards at afternoon tea parties where guests might win or lose hundreds of dollars. In the evening, families would summon servants to bring the card table into the center of the drawing room after dinner, as card playing was a primary form of evening entertainment. Players became embroiled in spirited games of whist, a simpler foreunner of bridge, pokerlike brag, quadrille, or any of the several other games while spectators observed the action. 

When not in use, card tables in most households remained folded away to become consoles or side tables. Servants set card tables against the wall when not in use, sometimes with the upper half raised as a kind of ornamental backsplash.

After about 1840, card tables began to lose the felt inlaid on their surface. People still played cards but now these tables came into popular use as tea tables. With a smooth top, minus the fishponds and candlestick rests—indoor lighting had been much improved—it was now possible to place a tablecloth over the table without the fear of anything toppling due to the former depressions. In many cases, these table featured graceful rounded corners and were still being made of mahogany or walnut.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The Age of Photography" in the 2023 Holiday Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Are Coffee Tables Antique?

 

QUESTION: I just purchased an antique coffee table and would like to know more about it. What can you tell me about my table? Is it a valuable antique?

ANSWER: I hate to burst your bubble, but your table isn’t an antique. In fact, coffee tables are a modern invention. No one knows exactly where they came from or who designed the first one.

The current definition a coffee table is a low, wide table placed in front of a couch or sofa to receive drinks, TV remotes, magazines, ashtrays, and miscellaneous other items, including feet. Yes, some people do prop their tired feet up once in a while. But a quick look back in time doesn't show many similar tables in our Western history. Old photos of late Victorian room settings show taller tables, often placed behind a sofa to receive cups and glasses when not in use. The only other table offering close to the service of a coffee table was the parlor table, often placed in the middle of the room with a gas lamp on it. Here, the lady of the house could serve coffee or tea to guests.



During the latter half of the 19th century, wealthy people became interested in the exotic furniture of Turkey. They would set up a special corner or an entire room using pillowed benches and ornately carved, low, round tables from which they drank strong Turkish coffee and tea.

Americans became especially fond of Japanese design after the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. They particularly liked the idea of sitting on pillows on the floor and eating at low tables like the Japanese do. When the Aesthetic Movement took hold in the 1880s, furniture designers blended Eastlake and Renaissance Revival styles with Turkish and Asian ones.

While some sources note the production of low tables in various Revival styles during the last decade of the 1800s, no one has ever seen any.

The coffee table appeared in the 20th century, most likely in the 1920s and 1930s. As Americans began to purchase parlor sets, consisting of perhaps a couch, two chairs, and several small tables, the coffee table idea became more popular.

In 1903, F. Stuart Foote founded the Imperial Furniture Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He had learned the furniture business from his father, E. H. Foote, who had founded the Grand Rapids Chair Company in 1872. Foote claimed to have invented the coffee table himself while helping his wife prepare for a party. He simply lowered the legs on an existing table, and a new type of furniture came into being. Unfortunately, so far this hasn’t been proven.

Prohibition may have also played a role in the development of the coffee table. From 1920 to 1933, America was legally "dry." That led to a shortage of well blended, smooth tasting liquor. “Bathtub gin" and "white lightning" to the place of traditional spirits but both had quite a kick.  To soften that kick, people began mixing fruit juices and other beverages with the hootch which eventually led to the invention of the "cocktail."

During Prohibition, people often used this low table to serve coffee to their guests. But with the repeal of the law, they could once again legally serve cocktails, so it became known as a “cocktail table.” Sales for these low tables soared even during the Depression.

To make them seem older than they were and thus more elegant, many furniture manufacturers began producing their coffee/cocktail tables using stylized designs of the past. This was a direct result of the appearance of the Colonial Revival style of the early 20th century which encouraged furniture makers to create pieces in supposedly “colonial” styles. All of a sudden coffee tables appeared in the Queen Anne, Chippendale, Federal, and even Jacobean styles. Thus, many people today are fooled into thinking that their coffee tables are really antiques.

The only way to have a truly antique coffee table is to cut down an existing antique table as F. Stuart Foote did in 1903. And while your coffee table will be a true antique, it won’t be worth very much.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about the Sears Catalogue and the items sold in it in "Sears' Book of Bargains" in the 2021 Fall Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

The Other Arts and Crafts Designer

QUESTION: I have a Mission chair that has been in my family for decades. I never paid much attention to it. But recently when I was cleaning it, I turned it over and noticed a label under the arm of the chair which reads, "Limberts Arts and Crafts Furniture/Trademark/Made in Grand Rapids and Holland.” I know that Grand Rapids is in Michigan, but did this company also make furniture in the Netherlands? And just who is Limbert?

ANSWER: Charles Limbert made what you call “Mission” furniture in Grand Rapids and Holland, Michigan. In fact, his furniture wasn’t constructed in the Mission Oak style, which actually was a style of Arts and Crafts furniture that developed just before the turn-of-the-20th century.  This wasn’t as much of a style as what manufacturers called furniture made of oak that featured simple horizontal and vertical lines and flat panels that accentuate the grain of the wood. It was supposed to emulate furniture of the Spanish missions in California and Texas. What Charles Limbert made was furniture in the pure Arts and Crafts style.

The Arts and Crafts Movement in America originated in mid-19th-century England where the teachings of John Ruskin and William Morris popularized social reform. The movement began as a revolt against the Industrial Revolution and the dehumanization of the workers being replaced by machines. Americans learned about this movement through Gustav Stickley's magazine The Craftsman. Hand craftsmanship and a return to simplicity became hallmarks of the movement. These ideals applied not only to the lifestyle of the follower, but also to furniture and accessories in the home.

Hailed as the beginning of Modernism in the United States, Arts and Crafts interiors were in direct contrast to the preceding Victorian period of ornate decorative arts. Rectilinear forms of quartersawn oak replaced ornately carved rosewood and mahogany Victorian furniture. Mortise and tenon joints, butterfly keys, and the grain of the wood, itself, became the ornamentation on Arts and Crafts pieces.

While Gustav Stickley is best known as the leader of Arts and Crafts Movement in America, other designers also achieved recognition for their contribution to Arts and Crafts design. One of them was Charles Limbert. His company produced high quality Arts and Crafts furniture, but didn’t attempt to influence consumers about the idealized harmony of the Arts and Crafts lifestyle.

In the early 1880s, Charles Linbert began his furniture manufacturing career at the John A. Colby and Co.. in Chicago. He learned all sides of the furniture business— design, production, and marketing. An 1889 partnership with Philip Klingman established the Limbert and Klingman Chair in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Limbert and Klingman manufactured period reproduction chairs for only two years. In 1894, Limbert formed the C.P. Limbert and Company to produce Arts and Crafts furniture.

By 1906, the company had grown and moved to Holland, Michigan. Limbert called his line of furniture "Holland Dutch Arts and Crafts," most likely in reference to the local Dutch population.

Limbert's early furniture shows influences ranging from Japanese to Gothic. Some of his early china cabinets and bookcases have doors with stained glass in an Art Nouveau style.

His peak of design achievement came during 1904 to 1906 when he introduced many of his cut-out designs. Many of his de-signs were internationally inspired by the Vienna Secessionist School and designers such as Scotsman Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Austrian Josef Hoffmann. Limbert employed designers such as Hungarian architect Paul Horti and father and son Austrian designers, Louis and William J. Gohlke.

Limbert promoted his furniture as being "essentially the result of hand labor, with machinery being used where it can be employed to the advantage of the finished article." Like Stickley, he didn’t let machinery control production and emphasized the contribution of skilled craftsmen in his furniture promotions.

He constructed his furniture of quartersawn white oak, with well-executed doweled joints, keyed tenons and splined tabletops. Long, tapering corbels under arms characterize Limbert chairs. Unfortunately, Limbert didn’t extend his wood working quality to the hardware used on his pieces, most of which came from the Grand Rapids Brass Company.

Compared with Stickley's work, Limbert's designs were typically less severe and more visually interesting, usually achieved through the use of cut-outs and other elements inspired by the as English Arts and Crafts Movement and Dutch folk furniture.

His pieces were among the original furnishings of the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park. Today, several wash stands remain in the Old House section of the Inn.