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Lot Essay
The 'Roman' sideboard-table pattern is likely to have been invented about 1730 by the architect William Kent (d. 1748), Surveyor of King George II's Board of Works for the Chiswick villa of Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington. Burlington's tables were recorded in an inventory of 1770 in 'The Crimson Velvet Room' as 'Two fine Marble Tables [slabs] with brass Moldings on Gilt frames'.
These tables, with antique-fluted frieze, display projecting tablets with bracket-supported Bacchic baskets wrapped by Roman acanthus. The latter, alluding to Vitruvius' account of the supposed origins of the Roman Corinthian order of architecture, also featured in the decoration of the gallery at Chiswick. The table baskets are supported by serpentined and acanthus-wrapped trusses emerging from the volute-scrolls of the trussed legs, which are embellished with libation paterae and scale-imbrications recalling dolphins and the triumph of the nature goddess.
Their form and ornament relate in part to Kent's Houghton 'Marble Table' pattern illustrated in J. Vardy, Some Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones and Mr. William Kent, 1744, pl. 41.
In 1912 Lord Burlington's table, originally one of a pair, was photographed at Devonshire House, London (formerly Burlington House), and five years later was lent for an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It is now at Chatsworth, Derbyshire.
These tables, with antique-fluted frieze, display projecting tablets with bracket-supported Bacchic baskets wrapped by Roman acanthus. The latter, alluding to Vitruvius' account of the supposed origins of the Roman Corinthian order of architecture, also featured in the decoration of the gallery at Chiswick. The table baskets are supported by serpentined and acanthus-wrapped trusses emerging from the volute-scrolls of the trussed legs, which are embellished with libation paterae and scale-imbrications recalling dolphins and the triumph of the nature goddess.
Their form and ornament relate in part to Kent's Houghton 'Marble Table' pattern illustrated in J. Vardy, Some Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones and Mr. William Kent, 1744, pl. 41.
In 1912 Lord Burlington's table, originally one of a pair, was photographed at Devonshire House, London (formerly Burlington House), and five years later was lent for an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It is now at Chatsworth, Derbyshire.