Object Description
A fine George IV brass-inlaid rosewood centre table attributed to Gillows, the circular tilt-top with beautifully matched veneers, decorated with a continuous brass frieze of contre-partie anthemion and scroll-leaf and brass stringing, all set on a deeply reeded solid rosewood support on a tripod base with powerful ormolu lion’s paw and scallop shell feet, with the original castors. English, circa 1820.
Footnote: For a library table inlaid with the premiere-partie of the same leaf and anthemion
boulle design see Susan E Stuart, ‘Gillows of Lancaster and London, 1730-1840,’ Antique
Collectors’ Club, Woodbridge, 2008 Vol.I pp 291, pls 308 and 310.
This style of table appears in Thomas Hope’s ‘Household Furniture and Interior Decoration’,
1807, and a closely related 1822 design for one of this pattern features in Gillows' Estimate
Sketch Books, no. 3146. Sketches of related tables also feature in room plans made in the
studios of Gillow & Co., 176 Oxford Street, London. The first, circa 1817, is housed in the
Victoria & Albert Museum (Museum no. E.390-1955). Another appears in a design dated
1830 for a Library layout for ‘H.J.Thomp[son].’ (Stuart, ibid, Volume II, p. 352, plates E9 and
E10).
A sketch for a remarkably similar table appears in an anonymous coloured drawing of a
drawing room which was also produced in the studios of Gillow & Co., 176 Oxford Street,
London (Stuart, ibid, Volume II, p. 353, plate E12). The circular table in this sketch has the
same ribbed edge, faceted shaft with waisted gadrooned socle, and is also set on a tri-form
plinth with foliate-scrolled paw feet.