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Lot Essay
Several variants of this delicate rokoko table are known to survive and the form, as well as the distinctive parquetry decoration, have close parallels amongst Abraham Roentgen’s wider oeuvre. This elegant and versatile small table is conceived in the best traditions of the Roentgen workshop: it is fitted with a frieze drawer and finished in the round in order that it might serve any one of a number of functions, such as serving tea or writing. The back of the shaped rails are cut-away suggesting that it was designed to be easily carried about the room, and could be put to one side when not in use.
By the time Abraham Roentgen produced this table, the English forms of his earlier work had largely been replaced with European forms, although some subtle details of finish and practice persisted, such as the use of the rounded cockbeading with which the drawer is edged.
Dietrich Fabian illustrates two tables of near identical form in his monograph on the works of the Roentgens (op. cit.), both of which also display Roentgen’s distinctive vertically-laid veneers as well as the same raised edge moulding to their tops as this example (reinforcing the probability that this feature was always intended as part of the table’s design). The first of these comparables also employs the same design of parquetry panel to the centre of the top. This mode of decoration was a motif used repeatedly and to great effect, by the elder Roentgen, one notable example being in the important commission he produced for Johann Philipp von Walderdorff (1701-1768), Archbishop and Elector of Trier (see lot 45 for a discussion of this commission). A further close comparable example from Schloss Weissenstein, Pommersfelden, of circa 1768 is illustrated in H. Kreisel (op. cit.).
By the time Abraham Roentgen produced this table, the English forms of his earlier work had largely been replaced with European forms, although some subtle details of finish and practice persisted, such as the use of the rounded cockbeading with which the drawer is edged.
Dietrich Fabian illustrates two tables of near identical form in his monograph on the works of the Roentgens (op. cit.), both of which also display Roentgen’s distinctive vertically-laid veneers as well as the same raised edge moulding to their tops as this example (reinforcing the probability that this feature was always intended as part of the table’s design). The first of these comparables also employs the same design of parquetry panel to the centre of the top. This mode of decoration was a motif used repeatedly and to great effect, by the elder Roentgen, one notable example being in the important commission he produced for Johann Philipp von Walderdorff (1701-1768), Archbishop and Elector of Trier (see lot 45 for a discussion of this commission). A further close comparable example from Schloss Weissenstein, Pommersfelden, of circa 1768 is illustrated in H. Kreisel (op. cit.).