Lot Essay
This sideboard-table frame, bought on the advice of R.W. Symonds Esq. with its Venus-shell badges framed by Roman acanthus foliage and its serpentined legs terminating in Jupiter's eagle claw feet, is designed in the George II 'antique' manner and relates to 'table frame' patterns published by Batty and Thomas Langley in their City and Country Builder's Treasury of Designs, 1739. Related acanthus-enriched 'slab tables', with bacchic lion paw feet and satyr-masks, were acquired for Ham House, Surrey, in the 1730s by Lyonel Tollemache, 4th Earl of Dysart (P. Thornton, 'The Furnishing and Decoration of Ham House', Furniture History Society Journal, 1980, fig. 153).