CIRCA 1740, ORIGINALLY WHITE-PAINTED

The robust pier tables displaying a bold shell (or foliate spray) in the frieze, scrolled legs headed by masks and lion paw feet are modelled on a design by William Jones, published in The Gentleman or Builder's Companion in 1739 (see E. White, Pictorial Dictionary of British 18th Century Furniture Design, Woodbridge, 1990, p. 262, plate 27). Such tables, intended for the principal rooms of fashionable houses and usually supplied with accompanying pier mirrors offered virtuoso carvers the chance to display their repertoire and their design became increasingly elaborate. 
A pair of tables supplied to Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham for Stowe house, Buckinghamshire are among the most ambitious and best known such tables, featuring gilt-gesso tops and scrolled legs with lion masks and paw feet. Although their maker is not known, it’s likely they were supplied by James Moore (d.1726), his son, or Benjamin Goodison, the eventual successor to Moore’s business. The tables offered here compare to the Stowe tables at least in ambition if not execution. 
The tables were possibly commissioned by Arthur Forbes, who succeeded his father as 3rd Earl of Granard in 1734 and who, after a distinguished near-40 year career in the navy and as a diplomat, was appointed a privy councillor of Ireland and in 1740 was appointed Governor of Westmeath and Longford. Castleforbes, co. Longford, the seat of the Earls of Granard, was originally built in 1624 by Lady Jane Lauder, wife of Sir Arthur Forbes but was damaged by fire in 1825. It was soon rebuilt but the project was only ultimately completed in 1909 after the marriage of the 8th Earl to Beatrice Mills, daughter of the wealthy American financier Ogden Mills, at which time the tables were probably gilded and the marble tops added.