These 'stone-painted' pier-tables, embellished with Venus's scallop-shell badge borne by the goddess's entwined dolphins, are designed in the 'antique' manner promoted by the architect William Kent (d.1748), who served as Master Carpenter from 1728 and Master Mason and Deputy Surveyor to King George II's board of Works from 1735. A pair of marble-slab tables incorporating dolphins to the supports were introduced by Kent for Kensington Palace. These tables appear in an early 19th century drawing by Charles Wild of Queen Caroline's Drawing Room reproduced in D. Watkin, The Royal Interiors of Regency England , 1984, p.67. The pattern may however have been invented in the 1730's by his colleague the architect Henry Flitcroft (d.1769), who held the appointment of 'Clerk' to the board of Works and is thought to have designed related tables for John, 2nd Duke of Montagu (d.1749). Flitcroft supervised the building and furnishing of his residence in the Privy Gardens of Whitehall Palace. A group of Palladian furniture is known to have been removed from Whitehall to Montagu's house at Boughton, which may have included a pair of dolphin tables now at Boughton. These are attributed to Flitcroft and the cabinet-maker Benjamin Goodison (d.1767), who is thought to have worked frequently with Flitcroft and appears in the Montagu accounts between 1737 and 1742 (T. Murdoch ed., Boughton House, 1992, p.135, fig.136). This connection is further strengthened through the fact that in 1741 Goodison supplied 'a carved and gilt dolphin frame to match another' to George Brudenell, 4th Earl of Cardigan (d.1790), who had employed Flitcroft as architect for his London residence in Dover Street in 1732. Another related table from the Ramsden collection (illustrated in R. Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. edn., vol.III, 1954, p.287, fig.42) was sold Sotheby's New York, 23 September 1989, lot 154.

These tables were almost certainly commissioned by Sir Jermyn Davers (d.1750), M.P. for Suffolk, who partly aggrandized the existing Tudor house of Rushbrooke Hall in the 1730's in a fashionably Palladian style. An overmantel in the remodelled hall was carved with similar ruffled scallop shells as those featured on these tables (illustrated in C.Latham, In English Homes, 1909, 3rd edn., p.128). The contents of Rushbrooke Hall (now demolished) were sold by Messrs.Knight,Frank & Rutley on 10 December 1919, but the tables do not appear in the catalogue.