Breakfast Table (1968.16)

Called “flap,” “elbow,” “breakfast,” and “Pembroke,” small portable tables with two drop leaves and a drawer became popular in the 1770s for informal meals or tea. Between 1794 and 1823, Nathaniel V recorded orders for thirteen “breakfast tables” in his shop accounts, listing one in 1803 as a “mahogany breakfast table” at nearly twice the price of the others. He crafted this example from solid mahogany and mahogany veneer—a rare instance of his use of this decorative technique—possibly as a gift to his son, Felix, when Felix married Phebe Miller in 1826.