drum table

drum table, heavy circular table with a central support, which was introduced in the late 18th century. The deep top, commonly covered with tooled leather, was fitted with bookshelves or drawers, some of which were imitation. The support was sometimes in the form of a pillar resting on four elegantly tapering legs terminating in claw feet. In other examples, the supports rested on a platform with four concave sides, the platform in turn resting on claw feet.

An alternative name for the drum table was a loo table (so called because the card game known as loo—in the euchre family—was played at such a table). A variant of the drum table, called a rent table, had a circular or polygonal top, the drawers in the frieze (horizontal band beneath the top) being labeled with the days of the week and constituting a filing system for the rent collector.