Console table, one of a pair, of mahogany with giltwood detailing, the slabs of white marble.

A rectangular mahogany console table (1 of a pair) formed with two front pillars and two back pilasters raised on a slab plinth recessed between the pillars, beneath a rectangular frieze which incorporates a drawer, supporting the white marble top. The pillars and pilasters have panelled faces, defined by giltwood mouldings, and giltwood base mouldings and Corinthian capitals; while the frieze is decorated with lacquered brass mounts on three sides: a scrolling palmette or half-palmette at each corner and, on the front, addorsed end-on anthemia flanking a central roundel. The frieze-drawer is also fitted with round brass handles.

The Bettine, Lady Abingdon Collection. Bequeathed by Mrs T. R. P. Hole

One of a large number of pieces of French furniture, ceramics, metalwork, books and other decorative arts, from the Empire period and earlier, acquired in Paris by Charles Stuart (from 1828 1st Lord Stuart de Rothesay) (1779--1845). The Empire furnishings were probably purchased during his first period as ambassador to Paris (1815--1824), the earlier furnishings during his second embassy (1828--30). The Empire furnishings may have been intended for a London house. He acquired 4 Carlton House Terrace, where improvements were carried out from 1827 to 1831, and he moved in in 1834. Older furnishings were more probably purchased for his country house, Highcliffe Castle, Hampshire (now Dorset), which was remodelled and enlarged in the most ambitious Gothic style from 1830 to 1834, with some work continuing throughout the 1830s. In 1841 the house in Carlton House Terrace was let, and the family moved their London residence to Whitehall Yard. It was possibly at that time -- or in 1845, the date of Lord Stuart de Rothesay's death -- that the Empire furnishings were moved to Highcliffe.
Lord Stuart de Rothesay's collections were inherited in 1867 by his younger daughter Louisa, Lady Waterford (1818--1891), who maintained Highcliffe Castle. She left the house and its collections to her distant cousin Major-General Edward Stuart Wortley (1857--1934). When his younger daughter Elizabeth ('Bettine') married Montagu Bertie, 8th Earl of Abingdon, in 1928, he bought the castle and its contents from his father-in-law. The Abingdons sold Highcliffe and most of its contents in 1949, but retained the present group of furniture and some other pieces. After her husband's death in 1963, Lady Abingdon lived for much of the time with her close friends Mr and Mrs Tahu Hole, to whom she bequeathed all her personal possessions on her death in 1978. Tahu Hole died in 1985, and a year later his widow Joyce approached the Museum and offered the collection as a bequest. She died in December 1986, and in accordance with her will the Museum chose those items that it wished to add to its collections. Other items from the collection were sold to benefit the Museum, and the proceeds added to the funds bequeathed.

This console table and its pair (Museum no. W.13B-1987) in the French Empire style, form part of a group of furniture purchased in Paris by Lord Stuart de Rothesay, who served twice as British ambassador there (1815-1824 and 1828-1830). Stuart de Rothesay acquired a large quantity of French Empire furniture, which he later brought back to Britain to use both in his London home and Highcliffe Castle, the house in Dorset that he built in 1830-1834. The maker of both tables, Pierre-Benoit Marcion (1769-1840), worked as a cabinet-maker from 1798 to 1817; he was one of the principal suppliers to the household and entourage of Napoleon I, second only in importance to the firm of Jacob.

W.13A/1,2-1987