Round table that has on the inside the watertown slide - patented 6-13-1899 made expressly for Louis f nonnast sons Chicago ill 6'48 top rb can you tell me anything about it?

Answer 1

We have a similar "Watertown Slide" table, made by the Louis F. Nonnast Company of Chicago, IL. It is a round table, and the stamping on the underside indicates that it would expand to 10 feet 1/2 inch, with all the leaves in place. That's one big table! It has four "ball & claw" feet, two each of which spread with the center column, as the table is expanded on it's "slide mechanism." It was, according to what we can find, patented in 1899 in Chicago by Mr. Nonnast,. himself. He has always been recognized as a very high-quality Victorian Era furniture manufacturer in the Chicago market, but shipped his goods on both national and international markets. We have been contacted by an Illinois Auction company, (I wish I would have kept their name), who offered to send one of their trucks if we would consign this table to one of their auctions. FYI, they valued it, at auction, (in the early '90s), at "possibly in excess of $5000," for whatever that is worth.

All this, even though our table has only one leaf left. There's usually a story behind most antiquities, . . . Apparently, during the 1930s Great Depression Era, one year there was a terrible blizzard, and the woodpile had been either depleted, or was somehow inaccessible, so the family burned several of the leaves for this table in either the fireplace or the stove, in order to stay warm. That's the hand-me-down story on the missing leaves from our family's table, which will remain in our family for generations to come. FYI, for the past seven years, I have had a daily search on two auction sites, (eBay and Boocoo), and have never had a hit. This is apparently, not only a very high-quality table, but one that is extremely RARE.