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Lot Essay
The pair of marble-topped sideboard-tables are designed in the George II 'Roman' fashion with palm-and-acanthus wrapped cornices above antique-fluted friezes that are banded by flowered-ribbon moldings. Their acanthus-clasp cartouches display the shell badge of the nature-deity Venus garlanded by Jupiter's sacred oak that festoon from the flowered volutes of the truss-scrolled and patera-imbricated pilasters terminating in bacchic lion-paws. Such paws feature on a table-frame pattern in B.Langley's Treasury of Designs, 1745 (pl. 155)
The principal inspiration for these tables would appear to be a celebrated table that formed part of the furnishings supplied to Sir Robert Walpole for the rooms at Houghton Hall, Norfolk that were decorated under the guidance of the Rome-trained artist William Kent (d. 1748), while related cartouches featured on tables formerly in the H. Mulliner collection (F. Lenygon, Furniture in England, 1914, fig. 213).
The principal inspiration for these tables would appear to be a celebrated table that formed part of the furnishings supplied to Sir Robert Walpole for the rooms at Houghton Hall, Norfolk that were decorated under the guidance of the Rome-trained artist William Kent (d. 1748), while related cartouches featured on tables formerly in the H. Mulliner collection (F. Lenygon, Furniture in England, 1914, fig. 213).