Game Table

Thomas Day

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The lively form and whimsical curves of this game table are characteristic of the work of Thomas Day, a free Black cabinetmaker and architectural woodworker, who, by 1850, owned the largest cabinetmaking business in North Carolina. Furniture fashioned in Day’s workshop—which included free Black, White, and enslaved laborers—offered a distinctive, vernacular variation on the late classical forms produced in northern urban centers, such as those of Joseph Meeks in New York. Day adeptly navigated a complex political and social landscape. While creating furniture that appealed to a wealthy White clientele in the South, he also risked his life to covertly engage with abolitionist activity in the North.

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