This tea-table is designed in the George II picturesque manner with mixed architectural styles described in the 1750s as 'Modern'. Its serpentine rose-flowered top is supported by an antique fluted column and by 'gothic' cluster pillars evoking Roman altar-tripods. Its tripod 'claw' comprises acanthus-wrapped and voluted ribbon scrolls, in the French manner introduced by architects such as Isaac Ware and discussed in his Complete Body of Architecture, 1756. Thomas Chippendale featured related lobed and scalloped tablet patterns for tea-table 'China Trays' in his Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1754, as well as related 'claws' in his candle-stand patterns, pls. CXXX and CXX - CXXIII. Patterns for related 'very neat Claw-Tables', translated into French as 'Tables-a-un-seul-pied' were also issued by Mayhew and Ince in their Universal System of Household Furniture, 1762, pl. XIII.
A table with a plain top and strikingly similar base, identical but for more acanthus-leaf carving on the feet, was almost certainly supplied in the early 1760s to Sir William Baker for Bayfordbury, Hertfordshire, and is illustrated in R. Edwards and P. Macquoid, The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, rev. ed., 1954, vol. III, p. 206, fig. 14.