ATTRIBUTED TO SEFFERIN ALKEN AFTER A DESIGN BY ROBERT ADAM, CIRCA 1770

The design of these beautifully carved tables can be attributed to Robert Adam and their carving to Sefferin Alken based on their remarkable similarities to a pair of mirrors executed by Alken to Adam’s designs for the 6th Earl of Coventry (d. 1809) for Coventry House, Piccadilly (illustrated; sold Chrisite’s, London 6 July 2000, lot 24). The mirrors are picked out in white and gold in the same manner and their frames are carved with anthemion/honeysuckle alternating bellflowers beneath an acanthus leaf edge, identical to the frieze of these tables. The mirrors were supplied for the Great Room at Coventry House in 1769, at a cost of £68.16s.7½d, and moved to Croome Court circa 1848. They had been commissioned in 1768 and were designed to harmonise with the ceiling of the ‘Great Room or Dining Room’, for which Adam had provided a pattern three years earlier, that incorporated stuccoed medallions of classical heads and urns together with inset paintings in the style of the painted ornament of the Ancients (Soane Museum, Adam MSS, vol. 20, no. 63). Adam’s design for the mirrors also incorporated a cresting of figures flanking an urn within a roundel, which was likely not executed or was altered when the mirrors were adjusted in size according to James Wyatt’s alterations for the Earl of Coventry in the mid-1790s. The mirrors were supplied to accompany scagliola-slabbed sideboard-tables, for which Adam had provided a design in 1767. These tables, executed by the Soho carver Sefferin Alken (d. 1782) were invoiced in November 1768, while their tops were executed by Bartoli and Richter (sold from the Collection of Sir Charles Clore, Christie’s, London, 20 November 1986, lot 94); Alken subsequently invoiced the mirrors on 18 July 1769. If the latter tables were not so well documented it would be logical to surmise that the Julians pier tables had likely been commissioned en suite with the Coventry mirrors. Whilst this cannot be the case, their similarities render the attribution to Alken after an Adam design highly probable.