Table of oak, with carved decoration in Tudor style, designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, London, 1829-1831.

Oak table with carved decoration in Tudor style. The legs are formed of columns and arches on scrolling feet.

This table was bought from Christie's London. 23rd October 1975, lot 163. The stamp, A. Pugin, on the underside of the table top refers to the workshop he established in Covent Garden in 1829 which closed in 1831. This table may be the central section of a pedestal dining table which originally had a longer top supported on two or more pedestals. See detailed report by F&W Conservation in Departmental green catalogue.

A pedestal, of the same design as that for the V&A table, is now in the collection of Brighton Museum and Art Gallery.

A oak table, of the same design as W.79-1975, was sold by Woolley and Wallis, Salisbury in their sale of English and Continental Furniture, 4th July 2006, lot 344, hammer price £4200. See details and image in Departmental green catalogue.

Two other oak tables, made by Pugin's short-lived Covent Garden firm, survive. Although different in design to the V&A example these tables are virtually identical with square tops and pedestals formed of square section legs on an x-frame base. One, also stamped 'A. Pugin', has lost the original ceramic ball feet and is illustrated in Nineteenth-Century Design by Charlotte Gere and Michael Whiteway, page 20, pl. 13. The other table, without the stamp but with the original ceramic feet, was acquired from the Fine Art Society by Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum in 1999.

In 1829, the young designer A.W.N. Pugin established a furniture-making business at 12 Hart Street, now called Floral Street, in Covent Garden, London. As well as furniture, the workshop produced architectural woodwork, and Pugin based his designs on Tudor or Jacobean examples, as well as using the Gothic style associated with his later furniture. This table, stamped A.PUGIN under the top, is one of the few surviving examples of furniture from Pugin's business. The design of the base, with legs formed of columns and arches on scrolling feet, is inspired by Tudor sources although no sixteenth-century table looked like this. Evidence of later alterations to the edge and underside of the table top, and the size of the top in relation to the base, suggest that the table might originally have been larger, possibly with two sets of legs, and intended as a dining or library table.

W.79-1975