CIRCA 1750 - 60

This console table, with its mirrored frame of palm frond-entwined pilasters and monkeys perched on a pagoda stretcher, is crafted in the fashionable George II ‘French’ style promoted by the workshops centred in the vicinity of the St Martin's Lane Academy, London. The table recalls the inventive chinoiserie imagery featured in Matthias Lock and Henry Copland's New Book of Ornaments of 1752. Similar designs were also widely published by Thomas Johnson, whose whimsical patterns in his Collection of Designs, 1758, and One Hundred and Fifty New Designs, 1761, often featured animals perched within foliage and rockwork. The overall form of the table is also related to designs in the eclectic 'Modern’ style adopted by Lock and Johnson’s contemporary Thomas Chippendale. With its central foliate cartouche and mirrored-inset legs emerging from rockwork, the table is particularly reminiscent of a design, abet with pierced legs, in Chippendale’s Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, vol. II, 1755, plate 38. The table also shares marked stylistic affinities with the palm-wrapped square legs featured on the stand of the celebrated Kenure Cabinet, attributed to Chippendale. A comparable giltwood console table with pierced cluster column supports emerging from similar bases, was sold from the collection of the late Lord Samuel of Wych Cross, 17 November 1989, lot 53 (£22,000 including premium.)