Card Table

Inscriptions

Stamped on bottom tongue of cast brass feet: BB & Co / PATENT / 112 [each digit a separate strike]

Label

This mahogany card table, which originally belonged to Boston man of letters George Ticknor and his wife, Anna Eliot Ticknor, epitomizes the understated elegance of Boston neoclassical taste. It is especially noteworthy for its nature-inspired ornamentation by Thomas Wightman, then Boston’s finest carver. Note the acanthus leaf carving at the base of the shaft and the water leaf and acanthus leaf decoration on the saber-shaped legs.

The primary sources for much-sought-after mahogany were in the Caribbean and Central and South America, where the hard labor associated with harvesting trees often fell to enslaved Africans and Indigenous peoples.

From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art

Course History

ANTH 7.05, Animals and Humans, Laura Ogden, Winter 2022

GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ARTH 5.01, Introduction to Contemporary Art, Mary Coffey and Chad Elias, Winter 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

SPAN 65.15, Wonderstruck: Archives and the Production of Knowledge in an Unequal World, Silvia Spitta and Barbara Goebel, Summer 2022

Exhibition History

American Decorative Arts at Dartmouth, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 10-March 1, 1981.

This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 5–July 22, 2022.

Publication History

Margaret J. Moody, American Decorative Arts at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire: The Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1981, page 40.

Margaret J. Moody, "American furniture at Dartmouth College", The Magazine ANTIQUES: New York, August 1981, pp. 326-333, ill. Plate VII.

Robert D. Mussey Jr. and Clark Pearce, Rather Elegant Than Showy: The Classical Furniture of Isaac Vose (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Soiety in association with David R. Godine, publisher, 2018), p. 165, ill. 187.

Provenance

Collected by George Ticknor (1791-1871), Boston, Massachusetts, date unknown; to his daughter, Eliza (Mrs. William) Sullivan Ticknor Dexter (1833-1880), about 1871; to her son, Philip Dexter (1868-1934), about 1880; to his son, William Dexter (1897-1943), about 1934; to his wife, Constance Van Rensselaer Thayer Dexter (1900-1976), 1943; given to Dartmouth College, 1943; catalogued by present collection, 1965.

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