Lot Essay
The marble-slabs' pier-table frame is conceived in the George II Roman or picturesque fashion considered appropriate for sideboard-tables. Evoking a celebrated quote about the nature-deity Venus by the Roman poet Terence, its triumphal arched frieze displays a golden Venus shell badge inlaid in French-fashion. The leg pattern relates to contemporary India-back parlour chairs supplied to Dublin's St. Stevens' Hospital (Glin & Peill, Irish Furniture, 2007, fig.36). The inlay can also be compared to that found on a Dublin-manufactured cabinet in the Art Institute in Chicago, bearing the date 1732 alongside the makers signature John Kirchoffer. There is a possibility that this is the journeyman's signature of the John Kirckoffer, who was later listed as a cabinet-maker in the 1740s with premises in Dublin's Marlborough Street.