Object Description
An Important George III mahogany spider-leg table attributed to Thomas Chippendale
1768. England
The tulip banded rectangular mahogany drop-leaf top with gateleg action, on a straight mahogany frieze with oak lined cockbeeded drawers to each short side, on eight slender columnar form turned legs and stretchers ending in pad feet.
Dimensions:
79 cm wide, 33 cm Deep, 71 cm High
Closed – 33 cm
Extended – 89 cm
Employing superb timber, this ‘neat’ mahogany table is a wonderful example of Chippendale’s utilitarian furniture which, through the sheer quality of materials and execution, is at once simple and distinguished. Chippendale supplied, ‘a neat Mahogany 8 leg Table of fine wood’, on 9 June 1768 at a cost of £2 2s 0d and a further pair of ‘2 neat Mahogany Spider leg Tables of good wood’, probably similar in form to those at Dumfries House from 1760 although not necessarily by Chippendale.
For a related example, see the spider-leg table sold Christie’s London, 31 October 2012, lot 79 (£13,750)
Sir Edward Knatchbull, 7th Bart. (1704-1789) comissioned Thomas Chippendale to make a ‘neat Mahogany 8 leg Table of fine wood’, on 9 June 1768 at a cost of £2 2s 0d. (request image)
Sir Edward Knatchbull’s account of furnishings with Thomas Chippendale, 9 June October 1768, ‘To a neat Mahogany 8 leg Table of fine wood £2 2s 0d’ (The Knatchbull-Brabourne MSS U951/A18/26);
Inventory, 1885, p. 66, in the ‘Chintz Room’;
Inventory, 1926, p. 27, in the ‘Service Room’;
Christopher Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, Vol. II, London, 1978, p. 224, fig. 410.