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Lot Essay
The George II Roman 'Marble Table' or sideboard-table with Venus-shell displayed in Roman foliage and voluted truss legs terminating in bacchic lion paws, featured in a pattern in William Jones's The Gentleman or Builder's Companion, 1739.
Console tables of the mid-18th Century were rarely made in England, however the form appears to have been quite common in Ireland. This table, with its extremely accomplished carving centred by Venus's shell badge, is typical of Irish craftsmanship of that period. It is particularly fine in the way the elongated leg scroll continues into a growing C-scroll on the apron, while the acanthus carving almost reaches to the lion-paw feet, which are squared in the Irish manner. It may originally have had a Kilkenny marble top. A related console table at Malahide Castle, Dublin, is illustrated in G. Kenyon, The Irish Furniture at Malahide Castle, Dublin, 1994, p. 13 while another was sold anonymously, in these Rooms, 24 April 1998, lot 102.
Console tables of the mid-18th Century were rarely made in England, however the form appears to have been quite common in Ireland. This table, with its extremely accomplished carving centred by Venus's shell badge, is typical of Irish craftsmanship of that period. It is particularly fine in the way the elongated leg scroll continues into a growing C-scroll on the apron, while the acanthus carving almost reaches to the lion-paw feet, which are squared in the Irish manner. It may originally have had a Kilkenny marble top. A related console table at Malahide Castle, Dublin, is illustrated in G. Kenyon, The Irish Furniture at Malahide Castle, Dublin, 1994, p. 13 while another was sold anonymously, in these Rooms, 24 April 1998, lot 102.