The sideboard-table, with Venus-shell badges festooned with Roman acanthus-husks and serpentined legs terminating in Jupiter's eagle-claw feet, relates to antique 'table frame' patterns issued in Batty and Thomas Langley's The City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs, 1739. Another table of this pattern, including the shell with part fluted scallops, was sold anonymously, Sotheby's New York, 23 September 1989, lot 210. The same patterned shell features on related tables sold anonymously, Sotheby's London, 13 November l987, lot 32 and Christie's New York, 27 January 1990, lot 138. This form of shell also features on a claw-footed card-table bearing the cabinet-maker's label of Benjamin Crook, who was established in St. Paul's ChurchYard in 1732. It also appears on claw-footed chairs bearing the label of Giles Grendey (d. 1780) of Clerkenwell and on a pair of open armchairs, originally from Coleshill House, Berkshire, sold by the Executors of the late Miss M. E. Pleydell-Bouverie, in these Rooms, 25 November 1965, lot 37 (C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840, Leeds, 1996, figs. 265 and 435).
An identical table, possibly the pair to the present lot, but with a different marble top, was sold from the Estate of Marilyn Preston Graves, Sotheby's New York, 21-22 October 1999, 1ot 249.