Lot Essay
The sofa-table, veneered in richly-figured black rosewood, is ormolu-enriched with Grecian palm-flowered escutcheons and Aurora-stars in the French manner popularised by Thomas Hope's Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807. The latter feature on a table with related 'claw' pedestals supplied in 1812 by Gillows of London and Lancaster to Tatton Park, Cheshire largely executed after a design entered in their Estimate Sketch Books in 1804 (see N. Goodison and J. Hardy, 'Gillows at Tatton Park', Furniture History, 1970, pls. 23a and 23b). The table is inscribed with the name of Sir Thomas Gage, Bt. of Hengrave Hall, Suffolk, and he is likely to have commissioned this table about the same time as a suite of Etruscan-black armchairs in the Sheraton style sold anonymously at Phillips, London, 23 April 1996, lot 267. The Gage family is known to have patronised Gillows (see L. Boynton (ed.), Gillow Furniture Designs, 1760-1800 Royston, 1995, p.24), and the Gillows attribution is further enhanced by the fact that the chair pattern relates to that of a mahogany suite commissioned from the firm around 1806 by John Lloyd Wynne of Coed Coch, Denbighshire, sold by a descendant in these Rooms, 18 April 1996, lot 215. There is also a sketch for 'A mahogany Medal Box' dated September 1796 in the Gillows' Estimate Sketch Books that was commissioned for 'Sir Thomas Gage's Son', who was later to become the 7th Baronet and the person for whom this table was almost certainly made.