CIRCA 1770

The tables have elliptical and antique-fluted frames in the elegant George III fashion popularised from the 1760s by Sir William Chambers (d. 1799) and Robert Adam (d. 1792), who shared the post of 'architect' to George III's Board of Works. Their white-painted tops, with rich polychromed decoration in the Roman mosiaic or scagliola fashion, are framed in the 'Etruscan' manner by a black ribbon-band flowered with Grecian palms. Their husk-festooned central compartments display shell-scalloped patterae embellished with sunflowers and recalling Apollo's Palmyreen temple; while flowered arabesques of Roman-acanthus medallions of Apollo in triumph as the god of poetry with the nine Muses of artistic inspiration, who were his companions on Mount Parnassus. One of Adam's related scagliola patterns of 1779 decorated with a figurative tablet and medallion, is illustrated in P. Ward-Jackson, English Furniture Designs of the Eighteenth Century, London 1958, fig. 216. A pair of tables with similar tops, painted with figurative medallions on a white ground, was formerley in the possession of C. J. Charles (H. Cescinsky, English Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, London, 1911, vol. III, fig. 22) Another similar table to the latter was sold anonymously, Christie's London, 17 November 1983, lot 97. A table with an almost identical top was sold by Simons Galleries, Parke Bernet Galleries, New York, 6 May, 1949, lot 327.