ANTIQUE CANTERBURIES
Above, typical early Regency mahogany canterbury.
n 1803 Thomas Sheraton used the term ‘Canterbury’ to describe two different items: a small stand with partitions to hold music which could slide under the piano when not in use; and a small trolley for transporting cutlery, condiments and so forth for an informal supper. Although the term is popularly thought to derive from the latter (a lazy archbishop was supposed to have ordered one in order to save himself the trouble of rising to eat) virtually all canterburies made after 1800 were for music. Today they are generally used as magazine racks.
Canterburies were made throughout the 19th century in huge numbers and in varying qualities. Regardless of date, the majority consisted of a rectangular framework with single drawer below three or four partitions,
open at top (and sometimes at sides also). Four, short supporting legs on castors. Two knobs (occasionally one) on drawer.
Georgian/Regency: Legs usually continuous with uprights. Could be ring-turned baluster columns topped by finials, or straight, square-sectioned finishing flush with top rails. Rows of slats or turned balusters forming
dividers, generally vertical. Central divider on four-partition type often had raised centre with pierced carrying handle. Top rails of dividers sometimes dished.
For Regency variations see illustrations. Lyres sometimes have brass strings.
Above, later Regency rosewood canterbury with wreath and X-frame partitions.
Victorian: Turned legs  often shorter and broader than previously  generally attached underneath drawer.
Drawer sometimes without knobs, opened instead by pulling groove cut under and behind drawer front.
Partitions fashionably formed of fret carving. Corners often finished with turned finials.
Variations include: elliptical and kidney shapes; table canterburies  with upper shelf on tall, turned uprights; fretwork gallery around top; occasionally lift-top forming writing/reading-slope.
Victorian walnut canterbury with fret-cut dividers.
Early Victorian rosewood canterbury.
Until about 1840 mahogany or rosewood. Figured walnut for most Victorian pieces, occasionally papier mache or bamboo. Ebonised mahogany or beech for Art Furniture pieces of the seventies or eighties.
Victorian walnut canterbury doubling as an occasional table.
Some convincing reproductions of Georgian and Regency canterburies made in the early-20thC may now be very hard to tell from originals. Look for a build-up of dirt around the joints and general signs of wear.
The elaborate carving of many Victorian canterburies is too expensive to reproduce so this is a sign of originality. Repairs though, are likely, particularly to fretwork and projecting finials.
Occasionally brass inlay or applied brass ornaments on Regency pieces. Fret carving in scrolling and naturalistic patterns on Victorian. Occasionally inlay of light coloured woods and mother-of-pearl. Typically, papier mache decoration; Japanese lacquer on bamboo (see p. 330). Small, turned wooden knob(s) on drawers.
Early Victorian rosewood canterbury.
Polish. Ebonised surfaces on some.
Highly decorative Victorian examples often fetch more than more elegant earlier ones. Value may seem disproportionate to quality and extent of workmanship.
VICTORIAN REPRODUCTIONS
Early canterburies of Georgian form were still made during the 1850s, so may be later than they look. Generally  though not always  they are slightly heavier than their predecessors.
A late Georgian ‘Canterbury’ music stand of the type described in Sheratons ‘Cabinet Dictionary’ of 1803. Note the turned legs and uprights but flat mahogany divisions. The drawer below is veneered in figured
mahogany and the central division is fretted to provide a carrying handle.
A mahogany ‘Canterbury’ music stand of the type described in Sheraton’s ‘Cabinet Dictionary’ of 1803. These later Georgian pieces were designed to hold music and later papers of other descriptions. Note the turned
legs on casters and the flat mahogany divisions. Later Victorian examples tended to have turned divisions. The centred one in this case is fretted to provide a carrying handle.
Rosewood or other exotic woods
A mid-Victorian mahogany carved music Canterbury and stand. The rather delicately carved top gallery rail and twist turned vertical columns lend considerable quality to the piece.
A late Georgian ‘Canterbury’ music stand of the type described in Sheraton’s ‘Cabinet Dictionary’ of 1803. Note the turned legs and uprights but flat mahogany divisions. The drawer below is veneered in figured
mahogany and the central division is fretted to provide a carrying handle.
A mahogany ‘Canterbury’ music stand of the type described in Sheraton’s `Cabinet Dictionary’ of 1803. These later Georgian pieces were designed to hold music and later papers of other descriptions. Note the turned legs on casters and the flat mahogany divisions. Later Victorian examples tended to have turned divisions. The centred one in this case is fretted to provide a carrying handle.
Value points: Rosewood or other exotic woods
A rosewood Canterbury of c.1840 with turned outer supports and legs. There are both turned and flat dividing supports however. The concave box section beneath contains a drawer.

ANTIQUE WHATNOTS
A whatnot is a term usually applied to a shelved piece of furniture for incidental use, with or without a drawer and either mobile (on castors) or fixed. Examples date from about 1800 and have the usual characteristic turned uprights with collars or ‘bamboo’ double-collared designs. Later, like Canterburies, they exhibit Victorian features such as scrolled fretted carving, burr veneers and bulbous legs. A fitted drawer adds to the value, while a pair of large (preferably over 5ft.) Georgian whatnots would command a very high premium.
A large mahogany whatnot of four shelves with a drawer at the bottom and a three-sided gallery on top. More decorative examples are to be found.
A mahogany whatnot with a turned gallery to the top shelf and a central drawer. The gallery helps the price.
A rosewood whatnot with spirally turned uprights and a (broken) fretted gallery to the top. The drawer adds to the price but the effect is much heavier. 1820-1840
A walnut corner whatnot of elaborate turning and fretted decoration. The top fretwork is broken. Very much the heavy Victorian appearance.
A mahogany whatnot    with elegant baluster turned supports without a drawer. The effect is one of lightness. 1810-1830
A typical George III mahogany octagonal cellaret, bound in brass, on square reeded legs with fretted brackets at the top corners.
Brass banded oval version on stand with square tapering legs inlaid with a stringing line. Nice flat period leather castors. If this was much shallower and was detachable with a brass handle, it would be an oyster
bucket.
Brass bound mahogany octagonal cellaret on square tapering legs. Less brass and decoration than the previous example. 1790-1800
Highly decorative carved mahogany oval cellaret with reeded tapering columns and lid. The classical decoration is in the Adam manner.
WINE COOLERS or cellarets, 1790-1830
Oval Sheraton satinwood cross-banded in tulipwood, on tapering legs with collar. Maximum use has been made of the contrasting direction of the grain. 1790-1820
A cellaret, or wine cooler, was quite an important piece of furniture for those who had not yet acquired an Adam sideboard where the wine could be stored in a pedestal cupboard.
The wine cooler was the receptacle in which the wine was stored before use at the table  a sort of distribution stop between cellar and wine glass, but, more importantly, a means of cooling those wines which had to be served chilled. Certainly many of them have metal liners.
The wine cooler appears to have enjoyed a relatively brief and later Georgian boom after which the Victorians seem to have established, in their more commodious sideboards and cabinets, a means of keeping the wine
from sight without a separate container.
As many of them contain relatively little workmanship in proportion to their market value, they have been hugely faked especially the simpler (i.e. easier) Georgian variety.
Mahogany inlaid with boxwood and ebony stringing on serpentine bracket feet. It looks out of proportion because the front legs are propped up for the photograph. 1790-1820
Mahogany sarcophagus-shaped wine cooler with lion-mask handles and reeded moulding, on splayed feet.
Mahogany bow-fronted and inlaid with stringing lines of various colours. Underneath there is a separate drawer. The out-of-proportion feet suggest a piece after Hope.
The mahogany equivalent of example 1007. Cross-banded on the top and inlaid with brass handles, Plain legs with brass castors.
Brass bound oval cooler on stand with ‘Hepplewhite’ scrolled legs in the French manner. The top edge is gadrooned.
Mahogany wine cooler on stand, with turned legs and collars.
Mahogany Sheraton cooler with lion-mask handles, inlaid shell motif, black stringing. On splay feet with castors.

ANTIQUE TREEN
Treen can be described as a smallish wooden object normally made for a specific purpose which is attractive enough to be collectable. It therefore embraces a vast number of objects and anyone who becomes
fascinated in this subject will wish to read Edward H. Pinto’s Treen and Other Wooden Bygones. Obviously we cannot go into the depth of detail which has been possible in most other sections of this book but there are
so many delightful objects to be found that it would be a pity to leave this subject out. There are moreover certain features which influence price and it seems sensible to discuss them to help new collectors understand values.
One might define the main desirability features as: firstly, attractiveness with utility; secondly, quality of workmanship; thirdly, grain or colour of wood, and lastly, quaintness or just decorativeness. More than in any other sections of the book there are no absolute standards and so value is a highly subjective matter, hence the wide ranges given. What is important is that you like it. We give some fairly expensive items in this section but do not be put off if you only want to spend a pound or so, there are still small interesting pieces to be found.
This small wine cooler made in sycamore with, most important, a good colour and brass bands, and with its original tin insert, has attractive mouldings. It is very useful for flower decoration and even cooling wine.
Late 18th century
A unique antique cricket bat trolley. It might pass the quaintness test but is bulky and most important it does nothing practical. Now imagine that originally the side was hinged and a shelf swung out with holes for cricket balls, which would hold glasses, and there was room for bottles at the base, then it would have quite a different value. Makes adjusting, adapting, call it what you like, so profitable.
Colour and grain of wood has been enjoyed by collectors for a long time. This coffee grinder made of lignum vitae no longer grinds coffee and, while the turning is good, it does not require huge ability to make. Its
attraction lies in its rich deep colour, with the yellow sapwood providing a contrast. One has to handle a piece like this to appreciate it properly. 18th century
This carved mangle board illustrates another area where quality of workmanship is high and where the piece can be admired for what it is rather than what it now does.
The next of the desirability features, that of quality workmanship without current use, covers a very large area of carved and sculptured figures. This example of a carved plane, with a superb cherub beautifully
executed, stands on its own decoratively.
The decoy duck is certainly decorative. Clever use of sapwood to mark the beak makes it particularly attractive. There are clubs of decoy duck collectors in the United States, so the price is high.
19th century
A more simple example of a lignum vitae string box  some have blades to cut the string if you pull at an angle. One can see the sharp contrast of the wood and visualise the intensity of colour.
Quaintness, which is perhaps better described as ‘obvious age’, is clearly apparent in this simple Irish lamhog carved from solid willow. Doesn’t it look old How does one value such a piece
A turned long pole supporting an oil lamp on a base of three simple sledge type feet. The key to its desirability is that it is in yew. Not the pinky red tinge of the late eighteenth century but the nut brown of the seventeenth century that sends a ‘yew freak’ fumbling for his cheque book.
Late 17th century
A 9ins. boxwood chalice simply turned, with decoration of bands and triangles around the top alternately filled with crude cross-hatching. Well-turned below like an early brass candlestick. It cost 1 in 1968. British Rail Pension Fund please note that maximum percentage increases in value often go hand in hand with low initial price.
Late 17th/early 18th century
Quaintness, it is suggested, can exist not necessarily in the piece itself but in the associations it produces. This is a 161/2ins. high oak pillarbox from the hall of a country house. A handwritten note states the delivery and despatch times, starting with 6 a.m. High price because almost identical to one in Pinto. But it is possible to find something similar at 40.

Antique Washstands and Occasional Stands

This one word covers a large number of different types. Most supported some sort of lighting equipment or enabled some work of art to be seen from the right angle. They are popular today because they help to vary
the levels in a room and often find employment for vases of flowers.
One of a pair of eighteenth century walnut torcheres with moulded serpentine top. The stem of baluster form on the top half with hexagonal shape below. The (literally) tripod base carved to resemble three buckled
shoes with knees and decoration of stylised acanthus leaf. The William and Mary stem with early eighteenth century feet looks a little strange probably Dutch. c.1720
A Chippendale rococo mahogany torchere with three pillar column and a hexagonal moulded edge top. An elegant piece that could easily be mistaken for Edwardian.  c. 1760
A set of very elegant moulded mahogany legs supports this small Hepplewhite urn stand with small slide. Although it is slightly damaged there is no disguising the quality. To make an elegant cabriole as long as this takes real skill.  c. 1760
A very striking mahogany urn stand, again with small slide or candle-stand. The elegant curved cross stretcher support with a vase-shaped finial in the centre is a very good touch. c. 1770
One of a pair of oval classical marquetry torcheres or lamp stands. The Greek motifs of honeysuckle, continuous C-scroll and square key are all present. The platform and hairy feet are a later addition. c. 1800
One of a Regency pair of torcheres with gilt birds’ heads. One can see in the base the same triangular form that appears on card tables of the period.
A George IV hat stand. Surprisingly elegant turnings, though the overall effect is not exciting.
Typical rather late, rather nasty Victorian jardiniere. The marquetry adds to value, but otherwise it is useful rather than quality.
Quite a different sort  a folio stand, the type that picture dealers have to have for unmounted prints, drawings and watercolours. A heavy utilitarian example which always seems to be in demand no matter how ugly.
Late 18th century
WASHSTANDS
Like the night table the washstand, designed to hold the jug and basin set, is now technically obsolete. The question of value is therefore influenced by the use to which they can be put.
The first three examples are extremely decorative and are the corner variety. The four-legged washstands tend to have their galleries lowered, or replaced with brass frets. Complete with inset red tooled leather the
price is at least doubled.
A mahogany corner washstand with arched back and three drawers but no undertier.
A mahogany corner washstand with splayed legs and a shaped back to the basin shelf which is inlaid with stringing. Note also the drawers and shaped stretcher, dished centrally to hold a jug (an undertier, technically).
A rather fine fruitwood eighteenth century washstand on three cabriole legs. With pillar uprights supporting the triform centre section with two drawers and, above, a circular basin holder. Note the dished base,
designed to hold a jug or basin.
A late Georgian mahogany washstand on turned legs, with two cock-beaded drawers and shaped back and sides in solid mahogany, which is thin enough to give an appearance of lightness without being flimsy.
with turned legs 250-350 with tapered legs 350 -450
A Victorian mahogany washstand which is similar to the previous example but the legs have lost the elegance of turning and the drawers are simple, without cockbeading. The high backs are sometimes found cut down and leather can be inserted to make a writing table. c. 1860
A late Georgian mahogany corner washstand with fretted top to provide carrying handles and drawers below. The price of such pieces often depends on the existence of a set of china bowl and beakers to fit in the
spaces in the top shelf.
Decorative inlays and veneers
Late Georgian mahogany dumb waiter in which the upper tiers are of the folding flap type. Dumb waiters were used from the early 18th century onwards and were generallyplaced near a table so that guests could help themselves without the need for servants to stand in attendance. Sheraton includes them in his Cabinet Dictionary but the designs are rather complicated.
Elegance of tripod base
This mahogany washstand from the Price Guide to Antique Furniture showed how the Georgian mahogany type came to develop into that which we associate with the Victorian era  a plain back, turned legs, wooden
drawer knobs. Subsequently the Victorians improved the breed by adding marble or tiles to the surfaces liable to get wet and by omitting the sides and adding towel rails  as on the next examples.
Mahogany washstand with marble top and back. Slightly more ‘artistic’ washstand with marble top and stringing lines in box and ebony green tiled back. Inlaid stringing lines in box and ebony. Note
Oak washstand on turned tapering legs. Green tiled back, marble top, integral wooden towel rails.
A Liberty’s oak washstand en suite with a toilet or dressing table. The back is inlaid with pewter tulip heads above a canvas flap. The surface for the washbasin is of lead and there are cupboard doors below.
A corner washstand illustrated by Percy Wells c.1920. The design is basically 18th century, derived from the Hepplewhite and Sheraton types of the 1790s. c.1920
OCCASIONAL STANDS
Nos. 484-491 show a selection of perennially favourite stands for plants, busts and other ornament requiring elevation, from a manufacturer’s catalogue of 1900-1910.
An oak palm stand on four long legs with shelf stretcher.
An inlaid oak jardiniere of a type often made with decoration of hanging chains.
A burr walnut jardiniere’ or pot holder in the French rococo manner. With typical ormolu mounts on Me `knees’ of the cabriole legs and a brass gallery rail around the top. 1860-1880
An Edwardian ‘art nouveau’ pot stand in oak, flimsily made but with typically-shaped gallery or railing in the lower half. Ideal for Art pottery display.
An ebonised turned pedestal suitable for a bust of Mr. Gladstone.
A mahogany palm stand on a tripod base in mid-18th century style.
Ebonised turned pedestal of heavy dimensions and of distinctly 19th century design.
A more conventional ebonised fluted pedestal of 18th century classical design.
A mahogany palm stand similar to 484 but inlaid with ‘Sheraton’ stringing and decoration.
Another palm stand based on a jardiniere design.

Wooden Hall Stands (for coats, umbrellas, etc.)

The hall stand is an interesting piece of furniture for sociological reasons as much as stylistic ones. What did the first hall stand look like Are there 18th century hall stands There are boot racks and planks full of pegs or nails from the 18th century but the hall stand in its form shown on these pages appears to be a 19th century development, something which grew along with the increase in halls in houses. For the 18th century cottage, there was rarely a hall. One simply fell down the front step into the living room, hitting one’s head on the beams. For the wealthier gentry, external clothes and hats would be taken away by a servant. No, it must have been the same, well-worn old Rise of the Self-Sufficient Middle Class, with its entrance hall or passage, where coats, hats, boots and umbrellas were parked, which gave rise to the need for this piece of furniture. Now the hall stand is gradually dying, too wasteful of space to compete with pegs on the wall, too profligate in providing for far too many umbrellas and walking-sticks made redundant by the motor car. The hall itself is under attack, shrinking and shrinking so as to provide more space allocation to the living areas within a house.
And yet one retains an affection for the old hall stand. Its ability to tear a sleeve if passed by in a hurry; its mirror, uselessly hidden behind coats hanging upon it; its metal umbrella trays, full of cigarette ash; its
cunningly-designed centre of gravity, so sure to allow it, when the last heavy coat was hung upon it, to tip forward and crush one beheath it; these are the things that one misses. And the sheer exposure of leaving a
good coat or umbrella open to view on the hall stand of a populous family house; the certainty that it or they would be missing when needed.
What really makes the hall stand a thing of the past is the modern desire for neatness and order. A hall stand covered in coats, mackintoshes, umbrellas and galoshes or wellies is a muddlesome, unlovely sight. The
clothes closet, with its hangers and the vacuum cleaner, has supplanted it. There has been a recent vogue in America to use wardrobes (q.v.) in place of a stand, thus hiding the offensive paraphernalia away and
causing yet another container shipping boom, this time from the old wardrobe market. The Habitat brigade have gone in for bright red bentwood stands (q.v.). The hall stand of seventy years ago is having a job to avoid the hatchet; mark this progression of them before they disappear, leaving only the odd survivor in the museums.
A hall stand which was produced in oak or mahogany, incorporating a broken pediment, finials and two cupboards either side of the umbrella stand. More 18th century in conception but typically Edwardian in its use of the bas-relief carved panels and, indeed, in that particular form of broken pediment, which was used on so many pieces of larger furniture. 1900-1915
A combination hall stand incorporating a broken pediment and a cupboard on bulbous carved `Elizabethan’ legs. A piece to meet the prevailing fashion for carved oak furniture, with lion masks, scrolled dolphin-like
objects and acanthus leaves all proclaiming the maker’s open-minded attitude to the use of motifs from widely different periods. The temptation to break this piece up for use as various bits of other pieces of furniture would be strong to the modern producer.
The influence of art furniture upon hall stands. A mahogany or walnut model with a gallery of turned spindles above the mirror and a tiled panel above the glove box. Alas, however, a broken pediment surmounts the whole, reverting to a classicism Collcutt and Godwin would not have liked. 1900-1915
A hall stand, available in oak, mahogany or American walnut, of slightly more developed form. The bevelled mirror has beaten metal panels over and above it and the front legs are turned.
A slignt genuflection towards the progressive movement here. Look at the flat top with its deep-set moulding; the hooped umbrella rail; the tapering frontal leg under the brush drawer. Art nouveau has had a look in.
The round bevelled mirror, though practical, is out of keeping with the shapes preferred by the art nouveau designers, however.
A bamboo hall stand in which the maker, confronted with a surplus of material, has joyfully cross-strutted the framing and added fanciful chinoiserie grilles around the mirror.
An oak hall stand with an oval mirror and a brush box, surmounted by a broken pediment on top. It is 6ft.9ins. high and the top pegs ensure that only the master of the house or a particularly lanky offspring can reach the hats parked up there. A wise precaution: many a Homburg has been smashed due to juvenile collisions with the hall stand.
A simple hall stand with a narrow mirror, a glove box and two umbrella holders, with metal trays. The fretted corner brackets are decorative, an attempt to disguise its appearance as a guillotine frame.
An oak hall stand for umbrellas, with a glove box or drawer. The carving is typical of late 19th/early 20th century `oakiness’ with a lion mask and scrolland-leaf forms. Now something of an anachronism and ripe for conversion into a console table of some sort.

Art Noveau and Art Deco French and Austrian Tables

TABLES AND STANDS About 1890-1920
Walnut and marquetry table by Galle.
Art nouveau: Centres in Paris, Vienna, Nancy, Munich, Brussels, St Petersburg, Milan, produce tables original in design but not entirely divorced from past or devoid of exotic influences. A gueridon by Galle, though impossible to confuse with anything earlier, has three legs like neo-classical monopodia, with dragonflies in place of lions or griffins; tables by Majorelle have cabriole legs mounted with orchids in ormolu, owing much to early rococo, while Bugatti’s coffee-tables are unashamedly Moorish/Turkish in flavour.
Many art nouveau table legs are carved to represent stylized stems of plants, the tops decorated with flowers in marquetry; others, purely abstract, have asymmetrical, curvilinear supports. A much more austere style, showing British Arts and Crafts influence, was adopted by Dijsselhof, one of whose dining-tables at Gemeente Museum, The Hague, has pierced end supports.
In 1903, Hoffmann and Moser, members of anti-academic Viennese Sezession, founded Wiener Werkstdtte to produce popular furniture. Hoffmann favoured angular tables inlaid with black and white squares in ebony and mother-of-pearl. Another black-and-white enthusiast, Munthe of Norway, designs triangular, three-legged tables with sun-ray brackets that, as early as 1895, anticipate Art Deco.
Wide range of fine timbers, indigenous and imported, used in solid and as veneers by French art nouveau makers. Austrians and Germans tend more to use of native timbers for solid construction, with exotic materials (e.g. ebony) for inlay.
Luxurious French work largely hand-made, with adjustment to traditional joints, e.g. mitres, for more eccentric shapes. Wiener Werksttte uses some machinery.
Carving, marquetry, inlay in solid wood. Ormolu and bronze mounts.
Mainly wax polishing. Cheaper grade of late art nouveau types French polished.
Top quality art nouveau and secessionist pieces now very expensive. Commercial products in medium price range.
FAKE MAJORELLE
Small tables with marquetry tops bearing Majorelle’s signature have been faked in recent years. Marquetry lacks quality, timber often inferior (Majorelle usually worked in fine mahogany).
Nest of tables by Galle, about 1900.

Antique TABLES AND STANDS About 1790-1850
Neo-classical, second phase: In late 1780s a more severe neo-classical (’Etruscan’) style emerges in France, continues after Revolution as Directoire, later becoming basis of Empire (1804-15) and Biedermeier (1815-48). Leading designers: Percier, Fontaine, Mesangere in Paris, Schinkel in Berlin. Leading makers: Jacob-Desmalter in Paris, Danhauser in Vienna.
Most important development, originating in late 1780s but coming into general use until after 1800, is large circular table on centre pedestal with platform base, used both as centre-piece and for meals, essential feature of Biedermeier living-room in Germany, Austria, Russia, Scandinavia.
Mahogany, either in sold form or veneer, fashionable in France in 1780s; becomes scarce during Empire, often replaced in Napoleonic Europe with native oak, walnut, birch. Oak hardly ever used for Biedermeier.
Although steam-driven machines gradually introduced in early 19thC, especially for sawing veneers, construction still traditional – heavy reliance on mortise-and-tenon joints, largely concealed in Biedermeier period by veneering entire surface. Large circular tables usually made with top pivoted to base, so that it can be tipped on vertical position.
Carving of monopodia supports – lions, griffins, sphinxes. Ormolu and cast brass mounts –Roman, Greek, Egyptian motifs.
Russian table, early-19thC.
New types include: small circular tables (gudridons) with marble tops, standing on cylindrical columns or monopodia supports; l`athenienne, based on tripod excavated at Pompeii, bowl serving as either jardiniere or wash-stand, side-tables on columns or mono-podia; dressing-tables on curved X-supports, with attached mirrors (usually circular).
Empire gu&idon.
French polishing after 1800. Monopodia stained black and part-gilt to create effect of antique bronze. Biedermeier tables wax polished, walnut examples never stained.
Circular tables on centre pedestals – type known in English-speaking countries as ‘loo’, from card game, ‘lanterloo’– made over very long period (about 1785- 1885) and in most countries. Prices depend on quality and size rather than age; much higher prices if capable of seating more than four in comfort.
FRAME TOP
Until about 1810, top of large circular tables does not have frame around circumference; after 1810, screwed to a frame about 3-4 inches/8-10 crns deep.
TABLES AND STANDS About 1815 to 1890
(overlapping previous period)
French kingwood and marquetry centre table, 19thC, in Louis XVI style.
Restoration of monarchy in France in 1815 provides excuse for reviving Louis XVI neoclassicism; fashions follow for neo-everything else, often mixed together in eclectic frenzy–octagonal tables with boullework tops, Gothic stands; gueridons on baroque spiral columns with rococo enamel tops. Napoleon III style (Second Empire) distinctive with tapered, fluted legs, black and gilt – but even these are derived from Louis XIV, XVI types. Each country resurrects features from its past. International exhibitions stimulate makers to vie with each other, no expense spared, but pieces imitated for middle market with as much expense spared as possible.
Leading craftsmen and/or designers:
France: Viollet-le-Duc (medievalist); Biardot (manufacturer of Renaissance, oriental).
Italy: Barbetti, Baccetti (carvers of Renaissance types).
Spain: Maeso (designer of Neo-Gothic, painted white and parcel gilt)
Great variety of woods, with preference for strongly marked grains, e.g. burr walnut, figured ebony (Coromandel wood), amboyna, kingwood, mahogany. Walnut in Scandinavia.
Bar tables with marble tops on cast-iron, cabriole-legged stands.
Industrialization gradually undermines craftsmanship. Dowels and glue, screws and bolts often substitute for mortise-and-tenon joints. In country districts, traditional types, e.g. farmhouse dining-tables, were still produced by hand.
Lavish carving, marquetry, gilt metal mounts, porcelain and enamel plaques.
Painting, japanning, French polishing.
Decorative pieces of exhibition quality now much sought after and very expensive. Simple, country-made tables – French, Austrian, Swiss, Scandinavian – not cheap but easier to live with.
The mere presence of a maker’s name stamped on a table in Louis XV/XVI style does not always indicate 18thC work. Although 19thC French makers were no longer required by law to stamp their products, some – e.g. Dasson – chose to do so, and their signed pieces are well worth having.
Table with porcelain top, legs inlaid with ivory, 1887.

TABLES AND STANDS About 1730-1770
Above, a Portuguese side-table, made in the English style, about 1750.
Rococo: After French and Dutch success at end of 17thC in correcting baroque excesses by the use of straight, slightly tapered legs terminating in bun feet, the elongated S-shaped cabriole leg becomes, by 1730, universally adopted for most tables and stands.
Below a French rococo gilded console table. about 1750.
Wide variety includes gaming-tables with fold-over tops, writing-tables (see DESKS, P. 253), guedridons, etageres (stands with two or three tiers), tables ambulances (small, oval or round), tea and toilet tables. Notable Paris ebenistes: Dubois, van Risen Burgh, Criaerd, Roussel. Dining-tables, however, even in chateaux, still plain and square-legged in farmhouse manner, were covered at mealtimes with fine napery.
Carved and gilt side-tables, especially by Corradini, Venice, retain opulence of baroque, but render it with lighter touch; supports are ornate versions of cabriole leg with sculptural details, e.g. console table in Royal Palace, Stockholm, designed by French-trained architect Harleman about 1750, and one for the Resident, Munich, designed by Civillis, made locally by Pichler, 1761.
Dressing-table of the King of Poland, 1769.
In Holland, tripod tables have three cabriole-curved feet splaying from central stem; drawers in side-tables have bombe-shaped drawer-fronts.
Veneered types: Exotic woods, e.g. king-wood, rosewood, usually laid on oak foundation. Wide variety of woods for marquetry.
Carved types: Oak or walnut for console tables left in natural state, pine for gilding or painting. Specimen marbles for tops prized by connoisseurs in 18thC.
Dutch tripod table, mid-18MC, with painted top.
Widely adopted Louis XV type of cabriole leg is joined by mortise-and-tenon to frame with smooth, concave curve on under edge; in Holland, parts of Germany and Scandinavia (asin England), more often a convex bulge, or wing, made from separate piece of timber.
In Denmark, one type of gateleg table has main section on shaped end supports, and flat, profiled uprights of gates; another type has turned legs split down centre, separating when table is opened up.
Veneered types: Marquetry flowers, trellis patterns, landscapes. Veneer on legs arranged with grain forming chevron pattern.
Carved types: Cabriole leg itself produced by carver, edged with C-scrolls continued along ‘apron’ (front rail forming decorative frieze); legs joined by curving stretchers with carved putto (cherub) at centre.
Right, a painted and silvered Venetian pedestal, mid-18MC.
Veneered types: Varnished, sanded down, polished with wax to bring figured grain and especially marquetry to brilliant finish. Ormolu mounts.
Carved types: Oak or walnut left natural. Pine painted and/or gilded.
Lacquered types: Painted with coloured varnished (e.g. Italian lacca or French vernis Martin) in formal patterns or chinoiseries imitating oriental lacquer.
Highly sophisticated examples, especially if with marquetry, expensive. Provincial types in solid wood rather less so, but vogue for country style has pushed up prices.
19th CENTURY COPIES
Skilful 19thC copies of Louis XV tables often veneered on softwood and relatively light in weight. Authentic examples, even of nominally portable table ambulance, usually veneered on oak and surprisingly heavy to lift.
Hinged leg supporting leaf of table.
TABLES AND STANDS About 1770-1790
Neo-classical, first phase (Louis XVI): Most obvious development is abandonment of cabriole leg in favour of straight, tapered
Louis XV knitling table on end supports.
types, either square-section or turned, but process is gradual. Le gout grec – taste for classical decoration – fashionable in Paris from late 1760s, but some makers (e.g. Topino, Lacroix) retain cabriole leg with modified curves for tables ambulantes until about 1775.
In Italy, sculptural tradition persists. In 1769 Piranese published engravings of side-tables as he correctly imagines Roman ones to have been, featuring sphinx and monopodia supports (monopodium: single animal leg surmounted by head of lion or griffin). Centre table made for Villa Borghese about 1780 has marble supports carved as winged lions; another, designed by Baladier in 1789, is supported by eight bronze figures of Hercules modelled by Pacetti (Vatican library). Provincial side-tables have heavy, tapered legs.
In Germany, Roentgen’s workshops devise tables with mechanical devices operating concealed compartments that intrigue Louis XVI. Roentgen also supplies Catherine the Great with tables copied by serf craftsmen on Russian estates. Arms factory at Tula produces occasional tables in cut steel with fretted decoration.
In Austria, Viennese guild enforces high standards; members produce side-tables on rather high legs, giving stilted look.
In Sweden, narrow console tables appear even narrower than they are, because mirrors over them are often very high; Haupt’s small tables on slim turned legs reflect experience in Holland, Germany, France and England. Strong English influence on work of Iwersson and Masreliez brothers; English-type tea-tables very popular in Stockholm, also in Copenhagen. In Norway, heavier versions of Danish types.
In rural regions everywhere, functional tables of traditional type made with few acknowledgments of new style, cabriole legs continuing to be popular after 1800.
As in previous period, but with increased use of bronze and marble. Scaghola, made by mixing marble chippings with plaster and size, substitutes for pietre dure; stucco lustro —painted plaster — simulates marble (see below).
Simplified by abandonment of cabriole leg; less shaping by carver, more by turner. Otherwise, business as usual.
Carving and marquetry — acanthus, wreaths, swags, pendant husks, oval and round shields. Same motifs cast in ormolu.
Many side-tables painted, gilded. Carved oak or walnut left natural.
Scandinavian console tables usually less expensive than French or Italian, and of a size suitable for small entrance halls.
See MATERIALS, above. These were brought to level of fine art in 18thC, can easily deceive the eye but are warmer to the touch than real thing.

Antique TABLES AND STANDS About 1630-1730
Portuguese side table, panels from 16thC Spanish cabinet forming the top.
Until about 1640, Louis X111 style still late-Renaissance with elaborately turned legs – a feature surviving until end of century in provincial France and other regions, e.g.
Portugal. Simultaneously, dramatic Italian baroque spreads through Europe, expressed in sculptural supports for tables and stands for cabinets.
After about 1660, equally grand but more classically disciplined version created in France for Louis XIV – fewer scrolls, more vertical legs. Low stands (gueridons) and taller ones (torcheres) for candelabra carved to represent blackamoors or Nubian slaves – finest French walnut loichete on spiral stem.
Pair of Venetian Blackamoor torcheres, 17thC style, actually mid-19MC.
by Brustolon in Venice, 1685-96. Engravings of palace interiors published in Augsburg and Nuremberg show side-tables surmounted by mirrors, and grand centre tables in entrance halls.
Turned leg types: Hardwoods, native (e.g. oak) or imported (e.g. ebony, jacaranda).
Carved types: Softwoods, e.g. pine, lime. Exotic woods for veneered and marquetry tops, hardstones for pietre duce (see DECORATION), marble for tops of side-tables.
Turned legs joined by mortise-and-tenon to frieze, which may have drawers made with coarse dovetails.
Common designs for turned legs and supports.
Carved types: necessarily unorthodox variations of traditional methods for joining sculpted figures of humans or animals to frame supporting marble top. Console table is fixed to wall and has leg(s) at front only. Small Venetian tables supported on upturned feet of blackamoor pageboys doing handstands.
Various designs for carved and scrolled feet, Turning: Baluster, bobbin, twist patterns. Carving: Often in the round for caryatid supports resembling mermaids with scroll tails; water nymphs holding giant shells; chained slaves pretending to hold up top; gods, goddesses, and cherubs frisking in foliage.
Marquetry: Arabesques, chinoiseries and (especially in Holland) floral subjects in exotic woods, ivory, mother-of-pearl.
Boullework: Brass arabesques inlaid into turtleshell.
Pietre dure: Florentine mosaic (see under CUPBOARDS AND CABINETS).
Flemish draw-leaf table, early-17thC.
Hardwoods oiled and waxed or varnished.
Softwoods painted, gilded. Italian (coloured varnishes) for torcheres carved as nubile Nubians wearing turbans, harem trousers, not much else.
Turned-leg side-tables, e.g. Portuguese type with fat turnings, often sell at prices comparable with good modern or reproduction furniture. Fine sculptural pieces usually expensive but not easy to place, so surprising things can happen at auction.
17thC blackamoor or Nubian figures usually have thin lips, later ones thick lips –but fakers know this, so pay high prices only if guarantee forthcoming. Convincing copies made in Venice in 1970s from redundant French telegraph poles.

TABLES AND STANDS About 1500-1630
German table on X-supports, before 1600.
Renaissance: After about 1530, mannerist influence in some examples. No dining-rooms as such in 16thC Italy – meals served wherever convenient, so many tables were still on trestles and easily dismantled; tops spread with damask cloths, oriental rugs, or covered with velvet, nailed on or draped. In some, new interest in classical architecture reflected in columnar legs or end supports based on Roman marble types.
Both features seen in French Renaissance designs by Du Cerceau (about 1550 – shaped ends, decorated with mannerist monsters, and connected by row of turned columns.
In Netherlands, dining-tables on bulbous legs joined by stretchers, some with extending leaves sliding under main part of top when not in use, decorated with carved brackets derived from engravings by Vredeman de Vries, published 1580 (updated by son, 1630), circulating in Sweden and Germany.
Before 1600, trestles of Spanish tables made with turned members, attached to top with curved, wrought-iron stretchers. Peasant type with plain legs, crudely-made drawer under top – still being made in 19thC.
Walnut in Italy, France, Spain. Oak in France, Netherlands, Germany. Chestnut in Spain. Pine in Alpine countries and Scandinavia. Lime in Germany. Ebony and other exotic woods or inlay, especially in Netherlands, Germany. Wrought-iron for stretchers in Spain.
Mortise-and-tenon joints secured by pegs for fixed frames and most trestles; X-shaped trestles made with halving joint. Tops, if not one board, made by joining planks with tongueand-groove or rub joints, sometimes with butterfly ties. For construction of draw-leaf tables see NEW WORLD TABLES, p. 328.
Tops of most tables plain, but some rare examples with intarsia – inlay using very small pieces of wood – practised in Florence, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Wiirzburg, Antwerp. Simple stands plain or turned, grander ones carved. In Netherlands, stretchers inlaid with ebony stringing.
Mainly oiled and waxed, or varnished.
Simpler types not outrageously expensive. Elaborate Italianate types with shaped end supports in Roman style highly priced.
Because so many tops were made to be lifted off, it is often difficult to be sure whether they are originals. Look for marks left by previous stands that do not tally with existing frame.