Lot Essay
The table is conceived in the George IV French/antique manner popularised by George Smith's Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide, 1826. Its plinth is carved with Grecian ribbon-frets, while the frieze is enriched with palm-flowers emerging from scrolled ancanthus tendrils. Its palm-flowered trestles are festooned with poetic-laurels, appropriate to a library or drawing-room.
The table is likely to have been commissioned for the great drawing-room of his Regency villa, Ballynegall, County Westmeath, by James Gibbons (d.1846). It was almost certainly supplied by the Dublin firm of Mack, Williams and Gibton of Stafford Street whose label appears on other pieces from the house. The house passed on Gibbons' death to his wife's nephew, J.W.M. Berry and was later inherited in 1855 by T.J. Smyth. The table, together with a huge mirror of similar style, was photographed at the house in the early 1960s, when Ballynegall still remained in the possession of the Smyth family.
The table is likely to have been commissioned for the great drawing-room of his Regency villa, Ballynegall, County Westmeath, by James Gibbons (d.1846). It was almost certainly supplied by the Dublin firm of Mack, Williams and Gibton of Stafford Street whose label appears on other pieces from the house. The house passed on Gibbons' death to his wife's nephew, J.W.M. Berry and was later inherited in 1855 by T.J. Smyth. The table, together with a huge mirror of similar style, was photographed at the house in the early 1960s, when Ballynegall still remained in the possession of the Smyth family.