Grandmother's Old New England Pembroke Table

Looking At

Grandmother’s Old New England Pembroke Table.

Understanding it and Proving to be a

Worthy and Gracious Guardian of it.

            This is not going to be a swell feel-good essay.  No.  It is about negligence and abandonment.  It is about ‘not seeing’ and bad taste.  Too.  It is about the cheap, the crass, the tawdry, the self importance and the flaunting of these as a proper etiquette.  It is about turning the back.  On.  It is about dithering and walking away while babbling at a smart phone.  It is not about being blind for that negligence is too ‘don’t know’.  One does ‘know better’ one would feel.  But that proves to be abysmal too.

            When I first see the old table, I am twenty steps away in the daylight at the head of a garage bay.  The table is back against the rear wall in the moist gray light.  I know exactly what it is.

            Exactly.

            And I am not there to be shown that table.  I am there to ‘look at’ ALL of the “stuff back there”.  The “car” had been moved out to allow my ease of viewing.  I pretend to care about all of this and, especially, the desire to ‘have the space back’ and that space “all cleaned out too”.

            I don’t care.  If it wasn’t for the old table, once a seven generation family anchor now about to be jettisoned in a burial-at-sea ‘cleanout’... I would not have

            Stuck around.

            But, of course, I know better.  I have better taste and... a better historic eye.  A better art eye.  A better sense of (old New England) heritage.  And... a better sense of (old New England) romance.  When I look at the old table.  Twenty feet away.  In the moist gray garage bay light.

            I say nothing about this.

            In less than an hour the old table is in the back of the truck with the... ‘rest of the stuff’ from the garage bay.  The bay is empty until the car is ‘parked back in there’.

            What is an antique table from twenty feet away?  It is a sensation; a physical nervous tingle merged with an art based mind-to-eye notification seconds later becoming affirmation.  All twenty feet away.  In the moist gray light.  “Back there”.  So not only do I say nothing but I, too, do nothing.  The table (once a “grandmother’s”) is jettisoned; buried at sea.  In the back of my truck.

            The table top has a large... from-planted-pot... water stain on the ‘its top’.  Grandmother created that?  Or was it her grandmother.  This doesn’t take long to figure out. And... nothing is said or mentioned of it; the plant pot stain OR the table.  Anyway.  But I figure it out in seconds

            See here now the what I see is that the old table of Grandmother’s is a “has been refinished” sometime along the time.  That refinish was ‘professionally done’ too for it is a good (uniform) job removing the old original ‘Indian red’ painted surface.  That refinish too had a new ‘good quality’ Hepplewhite style drawer pull ‘put on’ where once there was none excepting a tiny brass pull.  That is long lost leaving only its tiny hole... under the new hardware... on the old drawer front.  The drawer was originally designed to be open by the pull of fingers reaching the chamfered pull slot at the bottom of the drawer front.  But no one knows that is there now... just as it has always been there... except me.  I pull the drawer out from there just slightly only to ‘let me know’ (the drawer is ‘straight’; ‘all original’ and works).  This is all too much for you already-anyway isn’t it:  And done in ‘not noticed’ too.  Better off checking your txt messages... darling.

            So the ‘refinish’ is probably 1950’s but possibly dating earlier to be 1930’s.  So... it is just grandmother’s potted plant stain.  Not HER grandmother’s stain.  But it is HER grandmother’s table... that she discovered and ‘professionally refinished’.  Not the smartest antiquarian move but does ‘show she cares’ (about the table).  And cared.  Then she died (passed on).  The table was a ‘still here’ after that.

            Before that; grandmother’s - grandmother’s table, was a grandmother’s table before that for... how many generations?  Lived in that house?  With the table always the ‘still here’ generation after generation until generation after generation... finally... moved the table out of that house to be... ahhhh.... ‘stored’ at the back of the garage bay to be... ahhhh...... jettison it as burial at sea.  Okay with this and I am still twenty feet away from the table too?

            Maybe if someone (that’s a very large body of people) knew what the old table “is” or... “WAS”... maybe.  Right?  Yeah:  Just like that... everything is gonna be okay.  Why?  Because I get the table and I know what it IS and it IS in the back of my truck and I am driving away with it after seven generations of ‘grandmother’s table’ all pass before everyone’s eyes... in the moist gray back of the garage bay.  “See?”

            Now... what is it; this grandmother’s table?  It is a... taper leg Hepplewhite fold leaf Pembroke table with a drawer; a style of English origin very popular in, and too, made in New England between 1780 and 1820.  This table is made of New England Birch wood.  It (the New England and ‘made’) is gussied up to be titled ‘New England Federal period taper leg Hepplewhite style Pembroke table with drawer’.  The ‘Pembroke’ comes, vaguely, from ‘Earl of Pembroke’ (England) ...vaguely.  The whole is a ‘foundation grade’ New England style and taste furniture classic.  Hence the ‘twenty feet away’.  It is so classic one may possibly note it at FORTY FEET AWAY.  If one cannot do this (note it at all)... one’s (New England Wasp) ‘taste’ is “crude” (bad).

            I restate this again:  If one does not know what this table is when one sees one then one has... bad taste.  Don’t wave your finger at me.  Seven generations of your grandmothers are waving their fingers AT YOU.

            How does this be the ‘comes to be’?  Because I “grew up” with these tables in the houses; antique New England Pembroke tables in old New England seven generation homes.  You did too.  You just ‘don’t know’.  Or notice.  They are there.

            Ours wasn’t in the kitchen (a ‘kitchen’ or ‘breakfast’ table) but a lot of them are.  Ours was not.  No.  Our kitchen had an old handmade-on-the-farm sawbuck table painted in an ochre yellow paint that was the same size as a New England Pembroke table... that we’ve all used as our breakfast table for seven generations.  I still have it and use it.  For this generation it is a ‘my table’.  My Aunt carved her initials on the end of the top during her generation of usage.  Because of this table our ‘grandmother’s old New England Pembroke table was somewhere else in the house.  That is common; for these tables to be ‘around’ “somewhere else”.

            Ours was ‘under’ the double windows in the... you call it a ‘living room’... where around three walls of that room are seating and tables all facing the fourth wall with that being the old fireplace.  Seating is ‘center – left side – right side’ ‘before the fireplace’.  This room, the original main room of the original Federal period built home ...that is now just the ell of the whole home after the Greek Revival addition was added to the front of the Federal homestead in 1832 relegating the old fireplace as ‘old’... this room... is where our family sat.  And sits.

            There, on the left side below the double windows is our family’s ‘grandmother’s Pembroke table’ “with drawer”.  It is arranged so that the ‘drawer end’ (the end with the drawer in it) faces left onto my grandmother’s (sewing) chair... where she always sat.  She died in 1982.  It is just the same there; the table with ‘her light’ on it.  Her “sewing” chair.  The drawer on the table pulled slightly open with her sewing in it.  Her sewing bag behind the chair.  With the... old light olive green glass demijohn that she was filling with old postage stamps she cut off of the mail... whatever that was about... it’s just the same.  We called the Pembroke “grandmother’s sewing table”.  She called it “my grandmother’s sewing table”.  That’s as far back as anyone ever commented.  It was always there.  I guess.  Everyone knows what it is.  No one has ever mentioned moving it, jettisoning it or having it buried at sea.  It has never been in the moist gray light at the back of a garage bay.

            That table... is the ‘first one of those’ I ever really looked over hard.  As a budding antiquarian I found out about the form; New England Pembroke, and... studied it.  Study means I ‘looked’ my grandmother’s sewing table all over.  I even took the drawer all the way out, with its contents still in it, sat it on the floor and peaked ‘all underneath’.  My grandmother was there for that.  She kept talking about her grandmother and used the word “Pembroke” at least a dozen times.  The whole result of this council about the table is that

            I had this (antiquarian) form

            Down.

            Since then it’s just been one old New England Pembroke table...

            After another.

            I’ve been finding them... and purloining them... for years (decades).  No one has ever stopped me.  Often someone says “nice table” or “I love the leg” or “It DOES have a drawer doesn’t it”.  Say stuff like that... with a knowing inflection.  One is pretty advanced with the New England Pembroke form when one encounters the knowing inflection realm of knowing about these tables.  That little world is ‘most of the time’ a ‘blow by’.  That’s how that table that day had traveled to the moist gray lighted garage bay.  It had become ‘blow by’.

            I don’t ever expect anyone to know about old New England Pembroke tables.  I mean “why bother”.  You either know or don’t know.  “Sort of know” that a Pembroke is an ‘old table’ doesn’t bring one along.  No.  That’s where that plant pot stain comes along.  That’s real; grandmother’s plant pot stain.  She did that.  Grandmother did that... for you... to remind you of her... for the eternity... of the ‘her table’.  If you try to fix it... it will look like you ‘mucked with it’.  So just LEAVE IT ALONE.  Just put a doily over it and set the electric lamp on that.  If anyone ever asks, which they will not... just say that’s your (greatest-great) grandmother’s ...old New England Pembroke table... and that she did that; stained the table... with her potted plant.  Since they don’t have such a Pembroke table themselves... like... what are they gonna say?  “MINE HAS A STAIN LIKE THAT TOO!”.  It would really be just so cool if that is what happens.  It’s never happened to me yet.  In fact no one has ever said anything about any of the old Pembrokes I’ve recovered from the sea. 

            That is really what one gets out of this:  An old New England statement of good (understated) taste.  The tables are not rare.  The form is not rare.  Conditions vary noting two hundred years of New England domestic usage.  Cost of specimens are ‘easily affordable’ down to downright “cheap” when found... with fair regularity... at estate sales, garage sales, thrift stores and even ‘antiques shops’.  That is because ‘nobody knows what they are’ or ‘cares’ ‘anymore’ “they say”.  That’s not the way I know it though.  I see the tables all the time acting as guardians of old New England homes.  I will even say that without a Pembroke... an old New England home is ‘empty’.  And it is very possible for you to already have a true antique ‘grandmother’s Pembroke’ in your home and ...not know it.  Wouldn’t THAT be a surprise.  But, these days, people’s ‘taste’ is “just that foolish”.