Square Tea Table

Square Tea Table

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is a perfect example of what tea tables made in Newport between 1740 and 1760 looked like: a simple rectangular top with raised molded edges, plain skirts, and cabriole legs of extreme delicacy terminating in pointed pad feet. The design is masterful in its elegant simplicity. Several dozen tables of this model survive today, their differences being only in the skill with which the legs were shaped.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.