Lot Essay
The sofa-table is likely to have been commissioned from William Trotter by Sir John Pringle in the 1820s for the new drawing-room at The Haining, Selkirk created by the Edinburgh architect Archibald Elliot (d.1823). With its reed-edged drawers, voluted and patera-enriched trusses springing from an altar-plinth with Grecian-scrolled 'claw', it relates to a sofa-table and other furniture supplied in 1814 by this celebrated Edinburgh cabinet-maker. Indeed Sir John Pringle featured among the debtors listed at the time of Trotter's death in 1834 (F. Bamford, A Dictionary of Edinburgh Wrights and Furniture Makers 1660-1840, Furniture History Society, Leeds, 1983, pls. 58, 59, 60 and p. 135). The table pattern also relates to a pair of card-tables, which are likely to have formed part of the furnishings purchased by Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (d.1852) from Thomas Dowbiggin (d.1854) of Mount Street, London (M. Jourdain, Regency Furniture 1795-1830, London, rev. ed., 1965, fig. 158). It is of interest to note that both these firms worked together in the 1820s in the furnishing of Kinfauns Castle, Scotland (F.Bamford, op.cit., p. 122).