Worktable

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Worktables were one of several gender-specific forms produced in the Federal period. The silk fringed bag was for storing sewing supplies, the upper drawer, fitted with compartments, held items for writing. The leaf-covered turret cornices and tapering turned and reeded legs with a drum at the top and elongated, swelled feet are characteristic of Salem Federal-period table forms. The earliest documented use of the word “worktable” in Salem is in 1807, when the cabinetmaking partnership of Elijah and Jacob Sanderson paid Samuel McIntire three dollars for “Reeding & Carving 4 legs for [a] worktable.”

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art