It's "French provincial" 1960's version. The piece of marble was obviously cut in Italy. The finish was called "fruitwood" and the wood was most any light colored wood. Looks like a well made table. He probably got it from one of the North Carolina furniture makers. Linda C

If it orginated in the Philadelphia area, then it would make sense that you're looking at a Table Mountain Pine seahorse pedestal table. Note the 4 seahorse "legs" and horizontal "wave" cross members. It's pretty obvious that it was made by some local/amateur builder, so unless there are some type of markings on the underside of the table, I highly doubt you would be able to trace the history. That "heavy", "themed" style was pretty popular in the 40's and 50's. You would see a lot of it in "rustic" settings such as ski lodges or ocean front locations. Most notorious use was in your local seafood shack. The material is inexpensive, durable, and most often, treated with spar varnish (which yellows, hence the yellow appearance over lighter colored sections of wood). It also made the wood practically bulletproof to the elements. Over time, as the surface would mar or become discolored due to hot coffee mugs or water stains, it was a simple matter to rough sand the tabletop, slap on a couple of new coats, and your back in business. Pieces like that in long use often develop the appearance of wood fully encased in plastic. :-) One practice I particularly like is when they hollow out small rough "bowls" into the top surface of the table (or make use of natural knot holes), add baby crab, unique stones or shells, sand dollars, what have you, then encasing them in varnish. It makes for a very interesting conversation piece around the dinner table. I could be wrong, but that the feel I get. :-)

The situation with used pieces of any kind is they are worth what someone is willing to pay for them. For the most part they are not worth much. they would not be worth as much anyway even if they were antique which they are not since you stripped and refininshed them. But the style is a popular one still and if you advertise them on Craigs list or ebay I am sure you will find a buyer.

As maifleur wrote, you are unlikely to find leaves that fit the table so your option would be to find a wood worker to make them for you and they would be able to do it by having the table in their workshop. While the price you paid was a good price, I suspect you will find the cost of having the leaves made plus the cost of refinishing the table would not make economic sense. I recently gave away a wood dining table in perfect condition and I would imagine you could find a used dining room table for less than what it would cost to have the one you posted fixed up. Since the table doesn’t have sentimental value for you and isn’t an intrinsically valuable piece to begin with, it wouldn’t seem to make sense to invest money in it. It could have functional value for you for use as a table without leaves.