Lot Essay
The sideboard-table's top is inlaid with a tablet of sabicu rayed à quatre-faces from a golden pattera-medallion displayed within a lozenged compartment enriched with palm-flowered arabesques of Roman acanthus. The scalloped-edge medallion and arabesques correspond to the inlay of a pembroke-table supplied in the mid-1770's for Newby Hall, Yorkshire by Thomas Chippendale (d.1779) of St. Martin's Lane (see C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, fig.459). Its ornament is a refined version of the pier-table tops supplied by Chippendale in the early 1770's for Harewood House, Yorkshire (C. Gilbert, op.cit., fig. 474), and the whorled rosettes flowering its hollowed corners correspond to those on a secretaire that Chippendale supplied at the same time for Harewood (C. Gilbert, op.cit., fig. 96).