With its exuberant carving, this gaming table represents the kind of high fashion furniture created by numerous cabinetmakers who fled Paris after the French Revolution to establish fresh careers in New York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere. Dolphins, such as those seen on the legs of our example, were a popular motif often associated with America's seagoing enterprises during the Federal era. Finely crafted in New York, the table would have been very expensive to produce. It features gilding and elegant verd antique, a green paint that imitated ancient bronzes.