See below for what you're trying to do.
The path to the image can be relative or absolute if you're deploying in a war file or something to that effect. note the embedded DIV that inherits from the td class.
Code:
<html>
<style>
td.logo div {background-image: url(corner-black.gif); }
</style>
<body>
<!-- the above style should read td dot logo div open curly then the rest of the line - it is getting munged when i post -->
<table>
<tr>
<td class="logo"><div>Row 1, Cell 1</div></td><td>Row 1, Cell 2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Row 2, Cell 1</td><td class="logo"><div>Row 2, Cell 2</div></td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>