Resistance Around the Table

by Sabina Magliocco

My dining room table was purchased in Paris at the end of the 1800s when my great-grandfather Giulio de Castro married my great-grandmother, Marguerite Weil. It is a solid, beautifully-crafted Second Empire-style piece made of European walnut.  With both leaves attached, it can seat twelve. It is the kind of piece an upper-middle-class family would have wanted at the turn of the 20th century to demonstrate its prosperity and hospitality to guests and family members alike. ...