Tea Table
Artist unknown
1750–90
Medium
Mahogany
Dimensions
73.7 × 86.4 × 88.9 cm (29 × 34 5/8 × 35 in.)
Classification
table
Department
Arts of the Americas
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
198636
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
In the 18th century, Americans delighted in the genteel art of tea drinking, which facilitated socializing based on strict rules of engagement. First introduced to New York in the 1740s, the tilt-top tea table, designed in the service of fashionable domestic tea parties, was a popular form in colonial Philadelphia and New York. The spindled “birdcage” mechanism allowed rotation, which provided the hostess with a measure of gentility by enabling her to spin the table so that she did not have to r...