Tripod table, veneered in mahogany on oak, with gilt-bronze mounts, French, ca. 1780, from the workshop of Adam Weisweiler.

A tripod table with hinged top, veneered in mahogany on a carcase of oak, with gilt-brass mounts; the table can turn on its base.

Design
The circular table is raised on a single support in the form of a Doric column, set on a circular plinth into which are dovetailed three square-sectioned legs of stepped, S-curved form, each ending in a small, rectangular block, under which are fitted castors with peg-shaped sockets and rollers of lignum vitae. The legs each show two recessed panels on each side, each of these framed with a plain fillet and a row of beading in gilt-brass. Between the pairs of panels are set oval foliated paterae in gilt-brass. The top of each leg shows two recessed panels set with gilt-brass mille-raies or ribbed ornament and this also decorates the three visible sides of the terminal blocks to the legs, which are set on the top with square, gilt-brass plaques cast with a shallow knop above gadrooning. The castor sockets are cast with upper and lower rope mouldings; the wheels of the castors are in lignum vitae. The central plinth under the column is set with two collars of larger bead decoration in gilt-brass and, between the legs, with panels of mille raies (ribbed) ornament in gilt-brass, set within framing fillets of mahogany, mitred at the corners. The column sits within a gilt-brass collar cast with upright leaf ornament and a narrow rope moulding. The 10 flutes are lined with sheet brass. The plainly moulded capital of the column is in gilt brass, cast with a single, rounded moulding on the top edge. The mahogany veneer on the top surface of the table is cut in two leaves, book-matched to either side of a central line.

Construction
The table top, column and legs are veneered in mahogany on oak. The legs are jointed into into the central block below the column with long dovetails, running from the underside, these joints reinforced below with a three-armed steel plate, the central part of which is hidden by a turned knop of mahogany with gilt-brass collars and finial.
The column is in oak, veneered with mahogany, the veneers running across the front edges of the inset brass fluting. The top of the column narrows to a deep collar section, through which runs a long steel screw, with a square nut at the top, which stands just above the top of the column. The collar locates in a recess cut through a block of oak that is reinforced with a framing of oak billets, all stained red beneath and veneered on the sides and top with mahogany. The vertical edge of the recess is lined with a collar of brass, which allows the block, and thus the table top, to rotate. On the top of the block, the steel nut is surrounded with a decoratively turned collar, leaving the nut visible at the centre and locating with the underside of the top when this is down.

Two pin hinges set into the sides of the block at one end, locate in long, steel runners set on edge, attached to the underside of the top with six screws through tangs cast into the runners and outset from them. A lock striking plate set on the vertical front edge of the block locates with the tongue of a brass sping-lock screwed (with three screws) to the underside of the top between the runners. This keeps the table top locked when down and is released by pressing a button set in the centre of the pear-shaped brass plate. Between the lock-plate and the block, the underside of the top is cut away to receive the turned boss on the top of the block.

The top of the table is of plyed construction in oak, veneered on both sides with mahogany.

Bequeathed by the Condesa de Valencia de Don Juan

In the collection of the late Condesa de Valencia de Don Juan, Madrid.
Bequeathed to the BM and passed to the V&A on the advice of Sir C. H. Read of the British Museum and the agreement of the executor, 1919 (RF 19/741, MA/1/J870). This was one of four pieces of furniture in the bequest (W.9 to W.12-1919), all of which were thought to be English at the time of the bequest. The stamp on this piece was recognized by V&A curators. At the time of the bequest it was noted 'foot damaged'.

A simpler version of this design (not stamped) was sold in the Sotheby's New York Sale of the property of Kathleen and Martin Field, 20 October 2018, lot 1215. That table showed no gilt-brass decoration on the three feet.

A table of almost similar form, but with a top of Lahn marble, is illustrated in Wolfram Koeppe's exhibition catalogue, Extravagant Inventions. The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012), p. 200, fig. 90. That table (from a private collection) was recorded as by David Roentgen. The use of a Lahn marble top is an indicator of work by David Roentgen and this table therefore raises the question of whether his workshop was responsible for the making of a table that was simply supplied to a client by Adam Weisweiler, either directly or through a marchand-mercier. Many cabinet makers also acted as retailers of furniture and applied their stamp to something that might have come from another workshop. The 1983 book, Weisweiler, by Maurice Segoura and Patricia Lemonnier, does not include this pattern of table, either the V&A one or one in another collection. When the V&A table was acquired in 1919 it was thought to be English (as the tripod form might suggest) and there was no suggestion that the Condesa de Valencia was a collector of French furniture.

Adam Weisweiler became master of the Parisian cabinet-makers' guild in 1778 and immediately began to develop a number of different forms of decoration, each very distinctive. He worked for the marchand-mercier (dealer in luxury goods) Dominique Daguerre (d. 1796), producing exceptionally luxurious furniture mounted with plaques of Sèvres porcelain and Japanese lacquer. At the same time, however, he produced handsome but more restrained furniture veneered in carefully chosen mahogany and mounted in gilt-brass. He sometimes produced the same forms of furniture with all three forms of decoration.

Mahogany furniture was associated in the minds of Parisian consumers with the current enthusiasm for all things English ('Anglomanie'), a taste that valued high quality, relatively restrained design that was associated with ideas of political freedom and democracy, in contrast to the highly luxurious French styles which reflected a courtly taste that was soon to be overthrown in the French Revolution. The form of this table, with its useful tipping mechanism, was indeed an English design but rendered in a much more luxurious fashion than would have been common in London. This piece is an unusual form in Weisweiler's repertoire but an oval table by him in a stimilar style is illustrated in Patricia Lemonnier: Weisweiler. Paris. Editions d'Art Monelle Hayot, 1983, p.83.

Very similar tables by the German cabinet-maker David Roentgen(1743-1807) are known. One is illustrated in Wolfram Koeppe, Extravagant Inventions. The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012, fig. 90, p. 200 (catalogue of an exhibition of the same name held at the Metropolitan, 2012-2013). That table has a top of Lahn marble (from quarries close to the River Rhine), which was often used by the Roentgen workshops in Neuwied, Germany. David Roentgen first visited Paris in 1774 and the interchange of ideas between Paris and his workshops in Neuwied was particularly dynamic. Weisweiler's father came from a small town quite close to Neuwied and it has been suggested that Adam Weisweiler trained in the Roentgen workshops. This is unproven, but it is highly likely that there was contact between David Roentgen and the many Parisian cabinet-makers who were either German by birth or descended from German craftsmen who had moved to Paris to be at the centre of the luxury trade in furniture. A mechanical gaming table certainly from the Roentgen workshops, with the stamp of the Parisian furniture maker Pierre Macret (1727 - ca.1796) is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. no. 2207.42.1a-c) and it has been suggested that this was either retailed or repaired by Macret. In the case of the V&A table, however, we know that Weisweiler was not so much as retailer as a maker of furniture, so, despite the similarity to the Roentgen table, Weisweiler seems indeed to have been the maker.

The Contessa, Doña Adelaida Crooke y Guzman, who bequeathed the table to the V&A, inherited her title from her parents, the 23rd Count and Countess de Valencia de Don Juan. She was said to have left a number of bequests to institutions in Paris, London and elsewhere, choosing the pieces which were thought to be from the various countries. With her husband, Don Guillermo Joaquín de Osma y Guzman she had founded, in 1916, the Istituto De Valencia de Don Juan in Madrid, in memory of her father and to house his collection, which included arms, coins, manuscripts and lustre pottery. When she bequeathed this table, she believed it to be English.

In the second half of the 18th century in Paris the term ‘à l'anglais’ (‘in the English fashion’) became a form of praise. Everything from English politics to English ceramics was admired. Mahogany furniture was seen as essentially English and some of the most fashionable cabinetmakers, including Adam Weisweiler, who made this piece, turned to it as offering a wholly new style. They abandoned the complex marquetry of several different types of veneer that had been fashionable in France a little earlier, and instead used overall veneers of mahogany for their pieces. The form of the table, on a tripod base, was also a form that was seen as English.

However, as often happens when the taste of one country is copied in another, the French unconsciously adapted the English mahogany style to their established fashions. The rich gilt-bronze mounts on this table are in the tradition of French cabinetmaking and give this table a particularly Parisian air of luxury that would not have been seen on many tripod tables made in England at the time.

W.11-1919