This tea table features a scalloped, or 'piecrust', edge, a design common to Philadelphia tea tables. The true origin of the table is yet to be identified, but it has been attributed to either Maryland or Pennsylvania because Miss Ethel Hough, who bequeathed the tea table to the Museum in 1961, was from a family which had been in Baltimore since the late eighteenth century, and whose members it seems only took spouses from Maryland. Miss Hough left objects she believed were of local importance to the Museum and to the Maryland Historical Society. Although our knowledge of the specific differences between Maryland and Pennsylvania tea tables is scanty, the baluster-shaped pillar, the low-slung cabriole legs, the blossom carving in a square at the top of each leg from which emanates an acanthus-leaf carving, and the shaping of the ball-and-claw feet are typical of Philadelphia work of the period. Like other furniture forms known to have been produced in Baltimore during this time, tea tables would have imitated or been strongly influenced by the Philadelphia example.