Lot Essay
When the St. Martin's Lane cabinet-maker Thomas Chippendale (d. 1779) invented his 'Modern' pattern for the engraving of this 'china table', he depicted it as a solid tray-rail, but placed a sketch of its intended rail alongside. While fretted in a 'chinois' manner, the rail's ribbon-guilloche featured lozenged compartments to recall the embellishment of Rome's Temple of Venus. Also the nature-deity's triumphal shell badges deck the reed-moulded and hollow-scalloped corners of the 'altar' table to indicate her triumphal water-borne birth. They crown the water-bubbled cartouches and are tied by fretted and acanthus-wreathed ribbons to truss-scrolled columnar legs, which terminate in Ionic waved volutes. As Chippendale intended to recall water-dripping park grottoes, he introduced an arched stretcher - bridged by a rustic 'kiosk' instead of an urn. His early 1750s design is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and was published in his Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1754, pl. 33.