GAMING TABLE
Attributed to William Hackett (1780-1864)
Kennebunk, Maine, 1800-1806

Brick Store Museum Collection; Gift of Elliot R. and Elizabeth A. Green in memory of Thomas D. Green and Natalie Thompson Rogers Green, 2007. 2007.002.0001

Scroll over the image above to click links revealing detail images of the inlay work.

This extraordinary piece returned to Kennebunk, Maine, in 2007 as a gift from a direct descendant of its maker.

The gaming table is an excellent example by cabinetmaker William Hackett (!780-1864). Hackett was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and is believed to have trained under Mark Pitman, a Massachusetts cabinetmaker renowned for his adeptness in handling sophisticated pieces. Hackett arrived in Kennebunk around 1800 and took over a cabinetmaking shop established by William Hooper, circa 1780. By 1803, Hackett's advertising was touting his elegant mahogany furnishings from sideboards to secretaries that rivaled productions of any New England cabinetmaker of the period, helping to prove that the Kennebunks wanted, could afford, and were producing high-style furniture. Hackett's shop and tools were destroyed by a fire in 1806. He subsequently abandoned cabinetmaking and took up a career dealing in lumber and selling English and West India goods. Hackett's daughter Nancie (1825-1883) became the third wife of the renowned Kennebunk ship owner, Captain Nathaniel Lord Thompson (1811-1889).

The gaming table is on display in The Brick Store Museum alongside a mahogany and bird's-eye maple sideboard with tambour doors also attributed to Hackett. The sideboard has been written up in Agreeable Situations: Society, Commerce, and Art in Southern Maine, 1780-1830 (1987), described by historian Tom Johnson for an article in The Magazine Antiques, and exhibited as one of the signature pieces in the 1999 Brick Store Museum exhibition, Out of the Woods: 200 Years of Maine Furniture.