CIRCA 1740

The table's 'water' elements of Neptune heads and dolphins relate to the ornament of the pier-set executed for Hinton House, Dorset by the carver Matthias Lock (d. 1765) and now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (J. F. Hayward, 'Furniture designed and carved by Matthias Lock for Hinton House, Somerset', The Connoisseur, December 1960, pp. 282-286). A pair of tables with closely related supports, formerly in the collection of J. Edgar Monroe at Rosecliff, Newport, Rhode Island, was with Partridge, London as published in their Recent Acquisitions 1998, no. 10. The Partridge pair is attributed to Henry Flitcroft (d. 1769) on the basis of its close comparison to a further pair made for Sir Hugh Smithson, later 1st Duke of Northumberland for Stanwick Park, Yorkshire and later sold by Eric Moller, The Moller Collection, Sotheby's, London, 18 November 1993, lot 62 (R. W. Symonds, Furniture Making in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century England, London, 1955, pp. 160-161, figs. 213-215). The Northumberland pair has eagle-headed supports which terminate in similar dolphin feet. Flitcroft, who worked with William Kent in the Office of Works, is known to have worked for Northumberland in London and there is a further table of the same design in the Northumberland collection, originally thought to have come from Northumberland House in London (A. Oswald, 'Albury Park, Surrey, the Home of Helen, Duchess of Northumberland', Country Life, 1 September 1950, p. 677, fig. 10). While no furniture designs by Flitcroft survive, other related tables (with the eagle supports) have been attributed to him including a pair reputedly made for the Marquess of Rockingham at Wentworth Woodhouse, Yorkshire and now at Temple Newsam House, Yorkshire (C. Gilbert, The Furniture at Temple Newsam House and Lotherton Hall, 1978, vol. II, pp. 356-357). The master carver Lock may have been responsible for the Northumberland and Wentworth tables (a diary entry for 1752 notes 'Table to Ld Northumberland'; V&A Archives, Lock Collection).

A similar table was recently sold, The Legend of Dick Turpin, Part I, Christie's, London, 9 March 2006, lot 20.