This stand was owned by ship captain, ship owner and New Hampshire State Legislator William Flagg (1770-1844) of Portsmouth and Dover. Flagg identified his table by branding it on the underside of the lower drawer, a measure undertaken by a number of Portsmouth merchants, artisans and others as a means of identification. The branding of furniture, although not exclusive to Portsmouth was certainly taken to heart by many of the more prominent individuals within the community. A rash of fires in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries may have resulted in the need to identify valuables after they were rescued from peril and placed in a communal central area. The formation of fire insurance companies, which covered property including household furniture, and of fire societies that required members to take measures to safeguard their property may also have contributed to the presence of branded furniture. Protection of personal property was again in jeopardy with the threat of British attack during the War of 1812 adding another need to identify goods in the event of plunder or fire (see Kevin Nicholson, 'Portsmouth Branded Furniture', in Jobe, ed., Portsmouth Furniture (SPNEA, 1993), p. 424-25, 429).

Fashioned with a shelf intended as 'a convenience for sewing implements,' this stand is further embellished with a scalloped gallery around the shelf which was a favored decorative embellishment on Federal Portsmouth sewing tables (Sheraton, The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book (London, 1793), p. 415). Inspiration for the scalloped gallery may have come from furniture forms or through design patterns. Hepplewhite illustrated a scalloped gallery placed placed on top of a cupboard on stand and a rococo design by Ince and Mayhew was composed of a lady's dressing table shelf with a pierced undulating gallery. Price guides from the 1790s also offered additional options for sewing tables with a 'plain shelf' and 'with a rim on each side of shelf' (The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide (3rd ed., London, 1794), pl. 89; The Universal System of Household Furniture (London, 1762), plate XXXVIII; Montgomery, American Furniture (New York, 1966), p. 397).

A similar sewing table is inscribed in chalk with the name, 'Boardman' on the underside of the shelf and may refer to either an owner or the Federal cabinetmaker, Langley Boardman of Portsmouth (SPNEA files). Related tables with two drawers, serpentine gallery, reeded stiles and turned legs include a table labeled as 'Best' by Albert Sack, The New Fine Points of Furniture (New York, 1993), p. 306 and also illustratedd in Sack, American Antiques VI (1979), p. 1601, P4643; a stand in vol. IV (1974), p. 1106, P3913, also sold at Sotheby's, Collection of Joseph R. and Sue H. Keown, January 29, 1983; Lockwood, Colonial Furniture 1 (New York, 1926), fig. 153; The Magazine Antiques 125, no. 4 (April 1984):733; and a table that sold in these Rooms, January 18, 1992, lot 508.