Made at a time when Baltimore’s “fancy” furniture was unequaled in the United States, this exuberant painted and gilded card table was acquired from a descendant of the Donnell family of Willow Brook, a late 18th-century villa overlooking the Patapsco River west of Baltimore. A related chair now at the Winterthur Museum suggests that the BMA’s card table is part of a suite of similarly decorated pieces made for John Donnell (1752 – 1827), an Irish-born shipping merchant who lived at Willow Brook from 1800 to 1827. Recalling whimsical Rococo chinoiserie, the décor may be a nod to Donnell’s lucrative dealings with ports in the Far East.