Table (Board and Trestles)

Clark may have made this table for his uncle Joseph Clark III, of Medfield. Originally, the board top rested on the supporting trestles, allowing it to be easily dismantled to make the home's limited space more flexible. Although the trestle table was common in seventeenth-century homes, very few examples survive. The trestles are made with the same, mortise-and-tenon joinery used in most buildings (including the frame of the Manning House); in this way it resembles, on a small scale, period architecture.