EARLY 19TH CENTURY, CONSTRUCTED USING 18TH CENTURY LACQUER PANELS FROM A SCREEN

These elegant marble-topped 'pier-commode-tables', designed to display golden vignettes of Chinese garden pavilions, are conceived in the antique manner promoted by Thomas Sheraton's, Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterers Drawing Books, 1791-3 (2nd ed. 1794 and 3rd ed. 1802); and reflect French styles promoted by the furnishing of Carlton House, the park side mansion of George, Prince of Wales, later George IV. While the pier-tables' narrow width reflect contemporary architecture, with windows enlarged to introduce picturesque Chinese-fashioned landscapes; their triumphal 'Apollo' palm-flowered escutcheons indicate purpose as 'poetry book' cabinets for a fashionable apartment. So the nature-deity Venus is evoked by pearled and wave-scrolled friezes, while palms accompany Pan's reeds in enriching their antique-fluted Pompeian pillars, which are raised on stump plinths with spiral-flutes recalling Jupiter's vivifying fulcrum.