Pair of Chippendale Revival Step-End Tables, Carved Mahogany with Ball-and-Claw Feet, Restored, c. 1935–1955

The Piece

A handsome pair of two-tier step tables in solid mahogany, and a real showcase of revival-era carving. Each rises on four cabriole legs with acanthus-carved knees, ending in fully modeled ball-and-claw feet — the talons clearly defined, gripping the ball with visible knuckles. The shaped apron sweeps in a serpentine curve and carries a carved foliate cartouche at each corner. The lower tier is finished with a molded gallery lip that runs the full perimeter, and an S-scroll support carries a raised upper tier at lamp height.

The mahogany has been brought back to a deep warm red-brown with real depth in the figure, and the carving reads crisply because the finish sits in the tool marks rather than filling them.

These tables were acquired in pieces. They came to us in poor condition, structurally failed and apart, and were fully disassembled, repaired, reglued, and refinished in our own shop. They are sound, square, and stable, and they are ready for another eighty years.

History & Provenance

The vocabulary here is eighteenth-century English — the cabriole leg, the acanthus knee, the ball-and-claw foot are all Thomas Chippendale's, drawn from his 1754 Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director. The object is not. The step-end table is a twentieth-century American invention, designed for a twentieth-century problem: the living room needed a surface at sofa-arm height for a drink and a second surface at lamp height for a lamp, and one piece of furniture solved both.

Grand Rapids and the great American furniture houses produced these by the tens of thousands from the 1930s through the 1950s, marrying Chippendale carving to a thoroughly modern form. It was the dominant idiom of the American living room for two decades, and the quality of the carving on a given example tells you plainly where in the market it was sold. The carving on this pair is well above the middle.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

A pair of matched end tables is one of the hardest things to find and one of the most useful things to own — symmetry at either end of a sofa settles a room faster than almost any other move. The two-tier design earns its keep every day: the lower gallery holds a drink, a book, and a phone without anything sliding off, while the upper tier lifts a lamp to reading height without stealing the surface below it.

They also work apart. One makes an excellent entry table or a bedside with real storage above and below; the pair flanking a bed, a fireplace, or a pair of chairs looks entirely deliberate. That deep mahogany is happy against velvet, leather, linen, or painted walls, and the carved feet give a modern room the one note of age it usually needs.