The George II sideboard table with marble top has its frame richly carved with a Grecian ribbon-fret beneath an acanthus-wrapped echinois moulding in the George II 'Roman' fashion popularised by pattern-books such as B. Langley's Treasury of Designs, 1740, while its combination of serpentined legs enriched with 'pictureseque' shell-like cartouches reflects the 'Modern' style of Thomas Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1754.
The table was fitted with a black portor marble top when exhibited at the Antique Dealer's Fair and Exhibition, 1948.

R. W. SYMONDS
Robert Wemyss Symonds (d. 1958) was responsible, not only for forming some of the greatest private collections of English furniture in the first half of the 20th century, but also for raising the profile of furniture history as an academic field, thanks to his prolific publications. Best known of the collections he helped to form was that of Percival Griffiths at Sandridgebury, whose collection first became widely appreciated with the publication of English Furniture from Charles II to George II, in 1929 which Symonds illustrated exclusively with pieces from Griffiths' collection, making the collection the locus classicus for many subsequent collectors such as Samuel Messer, R. B. Moller, Frederick Poke, James Thursby-Pelham, J. S. Sykes, Geoffrey Blackwell, Lord Plender [see note to previous lot] and Claud Rotch, to name but a few.