TEA TABLE

In the 1730s and 40s, Robert Walker and his brother William (1705-1750), an architect and master builder, migrated from Scotland to Virginia’s Northern Neck, a prosperous region along the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers. Working in tandem, the brothers designed, built, and furnished houses for many of the region’s most prominent families. MESDA’s tea table, made of mahogany and cherry, descended in the family of Charles Carter (1707-1764), a King George County burgess and planter who commissioned Cleve, a two-story, brick, Palladian-style mansion that was designed and built by William Walker in the late 1740s. Cleve was located only a few miles from Robert Walker’s cabinet shop.

With tour de force carving on its pedestal and piecrust top, the tea table is a masterpiece of Robert Walker’s work that, until recently, had been attributed to Peter Scott (ca. 1696-1775) of Williamsburg. The Carter family table reflects the finely honed skills of Scottish émigrés like the Walker brothers and also of their carver, an unidentified artisan who, like William Bernard Sears (1732-1818), may have arrived in Virginia as an indentured servant.