拍品专文
The tops of these decorative tables are japanned in trompe l'oeil lacquer, with exotic birds perched in flowering shrubs in Chinese gardens, and match the fashionable tea-trays popularised by firms such as Jennens & Bettridge of Birmingham, who in 1816 took over Henry Clay's Birmingham premises (Y. Jones, Georgian & Victorian Japanned wares of the West Midlands, Wolverhampton, 1982). While their trompe-l'oeil black rosewood frames, with lyre-scrolled trestles enriched with flowered brass paterae, relate to the French/antique style popularised around 1800 by furniture pattern-books issued by Thomas Sheraton (d. 1803).