THIRD QUARTER 18TH CENTURY

細節

A PAIR OF GEORGE III MAHOGANY SERPENTINE TEA-TABLES
THIRD QUARTER 18TH CENTURY
Each with a shaped rectangular top with a guilloche and flowerhead-carved edge above a frieze with a gadrooned edge, on tapering turned and fluted legs, headed by panelled foliate blocks and with turned feet, one with black plastic Norman Adams label, and with two hand-written paper labels 'R.F.BUTLER 21-10-71' numbered '34' and '45' respectively, the feet added
31½ in. (80 cm.) high; 38 in. (97 cm.) wide; 18½ in (47 cm.) deep (2)

來源

R. F. Butler, 21 October 1971.
Anonymous sale, Christie's, London, 24 February 1994, lot 128.
Bought from Norman Adams Ltd.

注意事項

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

拍品專文

These beautiful mahogany window-pier tables are designed in the George III 'antique' manner with cupid-bowed and columnar cornered tops. Their marbling with Roman-medallion figuring is echoed by the reeded borders' festive oval medallioned ribbon-guilloche; and the latter is antique-stippled and flowered with Roman foliage en suite with tablets of acanthus rainceaux that project above the columnar, fluted and herm-tapered legs. The gadrooned edge would have harmonised with the frames of contemporary oval-backed chairs, conceived in the French 'cabriolet' style. During the 1760s, the court architect Robert Adam (d.1792) promoted the introduction of useful hinged-tops for tea or card-tables rather than marble slabs in the piers of fashionable London drawing-rooms. Similar legs, with Pan-reeded capitals, featured on stools designed around 1770 by Thomas Chippendale (d.1778) for the rooms decorated by Adam at Mersham-le-Hatch, Kent (see C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, 1978, fig. 389)