Featured Game Table

Here is what the MET says about their slate top table.

Slate Tabletop Switzerland C 1720
Most Furniture used in Colonial America was made here, although occasionally English pieces were imported, so it is unusual and interesting to come across a small group of slate topped tables whose bases were made in America, but whose elaborate slate & inlaid wood tops seem to have come from Switzerland.
It has been suggested that the tabletops were imported as a group by some enterprising merchant to whom they were shipped via the Rhine to Rotterdam and then to New England.

 

Let me translate all that, the MET has NO CLUE how or why these Swiss tabletops were imported to America and apparently, neither does anyone else.
I read somewhere that they were "made as mixing tables" so as not to damage wood finishes when mixing alcoholic drinks.
I am not buying this theory either, americans didn't "mix" drinks during this time, not even a little bit.

 

Clearly there is a huge difference between slate and wood. Wood was in short supply in europe, but overly abundant in the colonies. So of course wood furniture would be made here.

My point was that slate, and especially finished slate table tops, is different, as shown by the citation I included. Slate was not being produced here until significantly later. If you wanted slate, then you were going to bring it in from europe. Did you read what I cited?

 

Not really no, as usual you've gone down the rabbit hole, slate was available in the colonies, though maybe not in large commercial quantities but, that kinda MISSES THE POINT! I am not talking about the ROOFING INDUSTRY here, hello?
There were american tables that did have slate tops and, i am betting it was american slate on those tables. Thing is, even if the slate on these tables below WAS imported, THE TOP WAS NOT.
Queen Anne Lowboy C 1750

Chippendale Server late 18th century




Again, the question IS, why import these Swiss Tops?
Brooklyn Museum C 1710

 

I think it is as you suggested before, the carving. Something you could show off so people would know you had the means to buy furniture imported from Europe.

 

That could very well be and is indeed one of the current theories, those Swiss Hearadic inlaid images were "Hot", furniture fashion wise at the turn of the 18th century among the few that could afford imported furniture.
Still, i would ask, why not the whole table? Why just the imported top & build an american base? I am not aware of any other early furniture that has this "split" personality. It's odd! those crazy americans!

 

Just a theory, that way it takes up less room in the ship, more can be shipped over, so it is cheaper. Rich people are very cheap sometimes.

 

True! most rich people are cheap, that's how they got rich! but with rich people the name of the game is, extract as many dollars, or in this time, pounds & shillings as POSSIBLE! and, they didn't do that with imported English furniture, they imported the whole piece.
To my knowledge, no scholars have looked into this but, i plan on keeping a SHARP lookout in case any comes along!
Also, I WANT one of these early Swiss top tables! at depression prices of course!

 

Of course!

 

Ho hum, it is a shame you can't answer me without being so snide. Maybe someday? Once again, though, you missed MY POINT. I assume you know enough about slate production to know that there is not a special quarry used for the ROOFING INDUSTRY. Once you have made the effort to put a quarry into production you process the same slate into the thickness and size you want, whether roofing slate or table tops. But setting up a slate quarry and processing is not going to be a priority in the first N years of a country's existence, especially when you have a ready source for it from somewhere else (europe) so you don't need to do all that production (back when this was all being done by hand without machines).

Clearly, from a market point of view, if it is worth the cost per pound to ship roofing slates from England to the colonies, then it will be worth the cost per pound to ship higher margin slate table tops.

The National Park Service, which I take to be a pretty reliable source, states that: "Slate quarrying was not common in the United States until the latter half of the nineteenth century ... In the early colonial period, nearly all roofing slate was imported from North Wales. It was not until 1785 that the first commercial slate quarry was opened in the United States, by William Docher in Peach Bottom Township, Pennsylvania."