A RARE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SIDE TABLE

This magnificent side table displays many similarities to a pair of side tables in the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art in New York. These tables relate to an unfinished drawing by the designer and carver Matthias Lock (ca. 1710-1765) in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Although Lock is best known for his designs in an English version of the French Rococo style, this drawing is in the bold manner associated with the English Palladian movement, propagated in early eighteenth-century England by the architect and designer William Kent and his patron
Lord Burlington. This architectural style also affected furniture design. Characteristic of this are the large shell motifs, lion's paws and curling acanthus leaves seen here.

Particularly unusual here is the varied surface treatment of this table. The water gilding, now carefully taken back to the original, as seen on the central shell and acanthus and also on the scrolling of the legs and carved acanthus at the knees of the cabriole legs and paw feet, contrasts strongly with the painted coarse stone ground of the reserves. The combination of the central shell and coarse ground are highly reminiscent of the fashion for ‘Grottos’ popular in grand country houses in the early eighteenth century.