Some objects provoke immediate expressions of awe and disbelief, and this mosaic-style table is an excellent example. Like elaborate stained glass windows or tiled mosaics: parquetry employs precisely cut geometric wood veneers to create kaleidoscopic surface effects. It requires a lot of measuring, a lot of sawing, and even more time. Inmates at Tucker Unit, a maximum-security prison and farm, created this beautiful object in the late 1920s. Before Governor Winthrop Rockefeller took an interest in prison reform in the late 1960s, Arkansas’s Tucker and Cummins prisons were notorious for their inhumane conditions. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many penitentiaries were working farms modeled after southern plantations, with wardens instead of masters. Arkansas prison farms were operated for profit, and to save money, trusted inmates ran almost all aspects of the enterprise. The root of a very old proverb, “idle hands are the devil’s tools,” is the belief that leisure time breeds mischief. Under the guise of the moral benefits of industry, prison administrators organized a variety of labor programs. Well-liked inmates found themselves in blacksmith or carpentry shops where they created items to sell to the public, while less fortunate convicts sweated in the fields growing rice and cotton. This remarkable mosaic parquetry table probably kept several inmates busy for weeks or months; the entire surface of the tabletop and all four legs are covered in decorative parquetry. Upon completion, the table was presented as a parting gift to Tucker Unit’s Assistant Warden Mitchell when he retired in 1930.