CIRCA 1720

The card-table is veneered with an unusual timber called cocus-wood, a hard, dense wood with a chocolate brown heart and a yellow sapwood, often referred to, erroneously, as laburnum. It was imported from the West Indies and was often known as West Indian ebony. It was used as a cabinet wood between 1660-1740 and in the present instance, a section of cocus-wood has been sawn lengthways to provide a decoratively striped veneer (A. Bowett, 'Myths of English Furniture History: Laburnum Wood Furniture', Antique Collecting, June 1998, pp. 22-23). A cocus-wood card-table of this form is preserved at Ickworth, Suffolk and is illustrated in R. Edwards, The Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture, 1964, London, p. 519, fig. 7. Another is in the collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (illustrated in The Gibbs Room installation, D. Fitz-Gerald, ed., Georgian Furniture, London, 1969, no. 14). A further similar example formerly in the collection of H.R.H. The Princess Royal and The Earl of Harewood, Harewood House, Yorkshire, was sold The Humphrey Whitbread Collection, Christie's, London, 5 April 2001, lot 54. Most recently a table of this form was sold from the Estate of T. Gordon Little, in these Rooms, 15 April 2005, lot 170.