Game Table
Attributed to Thomas Day American
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.
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