Lot Essay
This mahogany and marble-topped pier table is designed in the early 19th Century antique manner and has its plinth and cut-cornered cornice veneered in watery-figured green, while a fringe of pearl droplets are suspended from its cusp-arched apron. Its ornament celebrates the triumph of Venus, and golden palm-leaves wrap its tapering and hollowed pedestal as well as the palm-flowers, which support dolphins that emerge from Roman foliage at the base of its hollowed corner-trusses, while their centres have draco or serpent-wings emerging from pearl-tied foliage. A pattern for a related table with plinth-supported dolphin trusses featured in the Sammlung von Zeichnungen der neuesten Londoner und Pariser Meubles als Muster für Tischler, Leipzig, 1815, while one with dolphin-headed trusses is illustrated in J.A. Romberg, Decorationen innerer Räume, Leipzig, 1835.