Card table

Duncan Phyfe

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Duncan Phyfe (1770-1854) was a Scottish émigré who established one of the most successful furniture-making operations in New York in the early nineteenth century. Phyfe produced furniture in the newest, Neoclassical style which was widely sought after by affluent consumers in New York and beyond in places as far south as the Caribbean. Thomas Cornell Pearsall (1768-1820), a New York merchant, commissioned Duncan Phyfe to make the spectacular swivel-top "pillar-and-claw" card tables for his family home on the East River known as "Belmont." The Pearsalls arranged Belmont with these card tables and another suite of chairs and sofas (1960.4.1-15), donated to the Metropolitan Museum in 1960, with a sella curulis or curule style crossed base designed after ancient Roman folding chairs.

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