Lot Essay
The occasional table, with concealed games-board interior, has its 'Elizabethan' bobbin-turned trestles Grecian-scrolled, in the manner of Apollo's lyre, to evoke lyric poetry. The overall form relates to an 1818 pattern in the Estimate Sketch Book of Gillows of London and Lancaster (G.Wills, Craftsmen and Cabinet-Makers of Classic English Furniture, London, 1974, p.123). Its brass 'oak-leaf' castors, harmonising with its oak veneer, relate to those of the Endsleigh Library Table (lot 850). This is probably the 'Chess Table and Men' inventoried in 1839 in the Duchess's 'Drawing Room'.