Lot Essay
This table, with triangular frame and tripod truss-scrolled columnar legs terminating in satyr hooves, is conceived in the French games-table fashion so that its reed-moulded top turns to form a rectangular and scallop-cornered top. Such a flap, popularly known as an 'envelope' or 'handkerchief' form, features on a 'harlequin' corner-table pattern in the 1730s trade-sheet issued by the Holborn cabinet-maker Thomas Potter (C. Gilbert and T. Murdoch, John Channon and brass-inlaid furniture 1730-1760, London, 1993, fig. 11). Its form was later adopted by George William, 6th Earl of Coventry (1722-1809) when he commissioned a tripod or 'claw' table with a rotating top with flaps that was invoiced by John Cobb on 3 July 1772 as 'an inlaide Handkerchief table and a carved pillar and claws... 6 6s' (A. Coleridge, 'John Cobb's 'Handkerchief' Table', Furniture History Society Newsletter, August 2007, p. 1). A closely related swivelling-top triangular table with flaps was sold by the late Lady Serena James, St Nicholas, Richmond, Yorkshire, Christie's, South Kensington, 16 May 2001, lot 145.