This exceptional tripod table, with its striking lattice parquetry Designs
top and intricately carved fret base, belongs to a group of Halfpenny’s
‘pillar and claw’ tables primarily designed for taking tea, the whilst
link being emphasized by the Chinese style decoration. Gothic
for Chinese Gates or Paleings’ re-produced in W.
Twenty New Designs Chinese Lattice (1750)
fretwork to stem relates to ‘Chinese
Frets’ in J.Cruden’s
Joyner and Cabinet-Maker’s
(1765).Conversely,
the scrolled ‘claw’ is decorated
exclusively in a Gothic fret of quatrefoils so often paired with
exotic decoration from the East.
Darling
Tea-drinking became fashionable in London around 1660 and
helped established the British ‘tea ceremony’ as a pillar of
politeness and gentility in Georgian England.
A costly luxury,
tea quickly became a symbol of wealth and sophistication.It
The accoutrement of the ‘tea ceremony’ were extensive and present
varied.
From silver teapots, kettles and canisters, to porcelain it
tea-bowls or cups, each component afforded the host an London
opportunity to display their wealth, command of etiquette and screen
worldly know-how. of
is difficult to make an attribution on stylistic grounds as the
table is so uniquely original in its design, however,
is undoubtedly the work of an extremely accomplished
cabinet-maker.form
relates to a flowered pole-
pattern in Messrs Ince & Mayhew’s, Universal System
Household Furniture, 1762, pl.
50.
mahogany tripod table
with a base of similar feeling but with pierced central column
and undertier, was supplied in 1755 to 2nd Duke of Atholl,
Atholl House (now Blair Castle), by William Masters
The Golden Fleece, Coventry Street, Piccadilly (A.Coleridge,
Masters and some early 18th century furniture at Blair
Castle, Scotland’, Connoisseur, October 1963, p.
80, fig. 6)
Tables such as the present example, were at the heart
of this choreographed ceremony and the vocabulary of
for
the design appropriately draws on East Asian influences
popularized by European pattern books in the Chinoiserie
taste.
‘William
In particular, the lattice top recalls the ‘Different
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