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.
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.