Lot Essay
This handsome table, forming the centrepiece of J. H. Leigh's fashionable furnishing of the library living-room at Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire, conceals writing-drawers within its altar-drum top, which is lined in Grecian-black leather. Its frieze of fine black-figured rosewood is framed in antique-tablets by brass-inlaid ribbon-bands in Louis Quatorze fashion, while its reeded and vase-turned pillar is supported on a Grecian-scrolled 'claw' that is similarly inlaid. The architecture and ornament, corresponding to that of the previous tables (Lot 27), also suited the suite of Grecian-black and brass-enriched chairs that had been supplied for the room in 1813 by the Bond Street court cabinet-maker George Oakley (d. 1841). This lot was presumably supplied by Oakley to James Henry Leigh during the period 1813-1819.