A characterful French walnut farmhouse table, 18th Century

The rectangular plain top over two frieze drawers, turned and ring-turned legs raised on bun feet, joined by a plain H-stretcher. The pair of drawers each with two turned wood knobs, the right-hand drawer fitted with a rudimentary hand-forged lock and keyplate.

The many gouge marks, cuts, and ‘bruises’ to this well-proportioned and solid walnut table suggest a colourful history. Eighteenth-century furniture found in farmhouses commonly were put to a variety of uses – a pair of simple corner chairs with solid backs were pushed together to form a three-sided cot pulled up against the family bed; tables typically functioned as multi-purpose surfaces for dining, scrubbing, chopping, ironing, and washing babies. The rectangular slot cut into this tabletop at an angle is a mystery but judging from the clamp and strap marks in line with the slot suggest that it was purposefully added to hold perhaps some type of equipment, such as that used by a carpenter or woodturner. Or could this table also have been used to hold a hand-cranked milk separator, judging from the imbedded stains towards one end?