THIRD QUARTER 18TH CENTURY

The beautiful flower-garlanded tables, with truss-scrolled and stretcher-tied 'consoles' supporting marble-like stone slabs, are conceived in the early 18th century Roman manner; while being serpentined in the mid-18th century French 'picturesque' style. Their cupid-bowed and columnar-cornered tops are supported on naturally-scrolling and richly-sculpted frames, whose combination of Roman acanthus with wave-voluted, scalloped and water-bubbled reeds, unites the Water and Earth elements and recalls the festive Spring deity Flora and Pan's Arcadia. This French fashion was promoted by plagiarised designs reissued as 'Marble Table' patterns in B. Langley's, The City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs, 1740. While Langley's featured rectilinear tops, table patterns with related serpentined tops were first published in the carver Matthias Lock's, Six Tables, 1746. The present tables were almost certainly provided as pier-sets en suite with the following Roman-medallion pier-glasses, whose airy golden frames are executed in French-fashioned 'carton pierre' (see lot 31). Such furniture, appropriate for the pier of a garden salon, formed part of the aggrandisement of Stoke Place, Buckinghamshire carried out by Field Marshal Sir George Howard following his purchase of the mansion in 1764 with the assistance of the fashionable architect Stiff Leadbetter (d. 1766). Leadbetter, who had trained as a carpenter builder and held the appointment of Surveyor of St. Paul's Cathedral, was already at the time in the employment of Thomas Penn at neighbouring Stoke Park.