A REGENCY GONCALO ALVES WRITING TABLE
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A REGENCY GONCALO ALVES WRITING TABLE

CIRCA 1815, POSSIBLY BY GEORGE BULLOCK

Details
A REGENCY GONCALO ALVES WRITING TABLE
CIRCA 1815, POSSIBLY BY GEORGE BULLOCK
With rounded rectangular top above a mahogany and cedar-lined drawer with stiff-leaf bracket supports, on baluster spindle end-supports joined by an arched stretcher and on arched feet with brass caps and castors, lacking one handle and castor, the top split, lacking one castor
28½ in. (72.5 cm.) high; 15¼ in. (39 cm.) wide; 25½ in. (65 cm.) deep
Special notice
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Lot Essay

With its distinctive 'turned standard column' ends and exotic Goncalo Alves veneer, this table relates to the work of George Bullock. A related oak, holly and marquetry sofa table was supplied to M. R. Boulton (d. 1842) for the Drawing Room at Tew Park, Great Tew, Oxfordshire, and invoiced in 1817 as 'An Oak Sofa Table with rounded rectangular twin-flap top branded with flowerheads and honeysuckle alternating with acorns the frieze with ivy and honeysuckle scrolls, fitted with a pair of drawers flanked by roundels on quadruple column end-standards joined by a turned stretcher, on arched feet with foliate caps mouldings & c £25 10s' (sold Christie's House Sale, 27-29 May 1987, lot 34). The Grecian-arched 'claws' of the Tew tables pillared trestles are inlaid with the same foliated pattern as those on Mrs Robert Ferguson's sofa table executed for Raith in 1817 (C. Wainwright et al., George Bullock, Cabinet-Maker, London, 1988, no. 22).

Plainer in form, then that for Tew, the Woburn table displays the distinctive two patterns of 'turned standard columns', as did many of the sofa tables described in the Bullock Sale at Christie's of 1819, and the concept of 'flaps' on the same plain as the drawer fronts appears on another Bullock sofa table in oak (Wainwright, op.cit., p.109).

It is conceivable that this may be the Rosewood Reading Table listed in the Library in the 1839 Inventory of Endsleigh, Devon.

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