A History of Table Leaves

 

Welcome to the A-America Blog! 

This blog is designed to inform, with both useful information about solid wood furniture construction and also updates with news, events and style trends.  Our first post is about the history of table leaves.  The second part will go into various styles and functionality of modern leaf structure.

PART I

    Dedicated dining rooms were not a household feature until the 1800s. Before that, tables either needed to disassemble for easy and quick set-up and storage, or had to be small enough to allow for shared space. Around the 1500s, solutions to needing more table space started appearing. The first table leaves to be developed were additions onto the end of the table as a drop leaf or draw leaf. While they had the advantage of being self-storing, the design limited the length to which a table could be extended before the leaf started drooping and became unstable. Over the next several hundred years, carpenters and engineers worked on the problem.