AFTER A 1774 DESIGN BY ROBERT ADAM, 20TH CENTURY

The basic sideboard-table pattern relates to that of a pair of 'eight legged' tables with mahogany tops inset with ribbon-guilloche borders, that the carver Sefferin Nelson executed in 1773 for Kenwood House, Hampstead, to a design by the architect Robert Adam (d.1792). The design was illustrated in R. and J. Adam's The Works in Architecture, London, 1774, (vol. I, no. 2. pl. VIII) (J. Bryant, 'Back as Adam Intended', Country Life, 3 November 1988, pp. 192-195). A similar mahogany top features on the sideboard-table designed by Adam in 1767 for Osterley Park, Middlesex, while the frame's antique flute and flowered-paterae enrichments together with hermed feet also appear on the Breakfast Room side tables designed by Adam in 1777 for the same house (E. Harris, The Furniture of Robert Adam, London, 1963, figs. 15 and 32).

A related form of leg features on the sideboard-table designed about 1780 for Saltram House, Devon (ibid., fig. 35). The brass balusters supporting the plate-rail are a simplified version on those of the Kenwood tables.