Centre Table of carved and gilded wood, with four legs carved as dragins, joined at the base with a curving X-stretcher. The frieze is carved with pierced scrolls of foliage and supports a separate topof black marble with floral decoration in pietre dure.

Centre table of carved giltwood, made up from earlier elements, with gilt-bronze mounts and supporting a pietre dure slab, the legs carved as dragons, joined by a shaped X-stretcher. From the collection of Lord Stuart de Rothesay, Highcliffe Castle.
The four dragons are probably in limewood, and gilded. Each stands on its own serpent tail, doubled back and twisted round itself. A pair of wings on each dragon extends as brackets to the frieze. The dragon tails rest on square blocks carved at the sides with paterae, above turned stump feet. The blocks are joined by a serpentine X-stretcher, with a large flower-head centre, the tops and sides of the stretchers with recessed panels. The feet and stretchers are probably in beech, and are much coarser in execution than the dragons. The frieze is in oak, each side with a section added to the lower edge of the centre to allow for extra elements of carving below the frieze. These additions can only be seen from inside the frieze. The motifs used are of eclectic styles. A recessed panel runs round all four sides, set with a scrolling foliage mount, of sunflower heads. Above and below this are plain panels, the upper one recessed. On the long sides the sunflower mount is interrupted centrally by a rectangular flower-head patera in gilt-bronze, a plain arched panel above this suggesting that a roundel mount was intended. The lower edges of the frieze are carved with bolection moulding with Régence motifs, palms and ivy, flanking rococo shell scrolls with feathered eagles' pinions. On the shorter sides the sunflower scrolls are centred by the same patera mount and the lower edges of the frieze are carved with flower-heads and foliage flanking a shell. At the corners, above the dragon heads, the frieze is carved in bulbous form beneath a gilt-bronze mount of acanthus and bullrushes, each with two swan's heads emerging, to run along the sides of the frieze.
Above the frieze is a supporting slab of Coade-stone like material, with scotia moulded edge. This supports and gives thickness to the top, with rounded corners and moulded edges. The black ground slab shows a frame of verde antico and a red marble, and symmetrically placed 'fruit trees' with a central trophy of fruits and leaves.
Inside the frame are original cross-corner blocks, bolted to the heads of the dragons. Large and irregular bolts holding each of the paterae are visible inside the frame.

The Bettine, Lady Abingdon Collection. Beqeathed 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 late Empire period and earlier, largely acquired in Paris by Sir Charles Stuart (from 1828 1st Lord Stuart de Rothesay) (1779-1845). The Empire furnishings were probably purchased during his first period of ambassador in Paris (1815-1824), the earlier furnishings, and those conatining earlier parts like this table, during his second embassy (1828-1830). The Empire furnishings may have been intended for a London house. He acquired 4 Carlton House Terrace and work there continued from 1827 to 1831 and into which he moved in 1834. Older pieces were probably purchased for his country house, Highcliffe Castle, Hampshire (now Dorset), which was re-modelled and enlarged in the most ambitious Gothic style from 1830-1834, with some work continuing throughout the 1830s. In 1841 the Carlton Terrace House was let. The family moved their London residence to Whitehall Yard. It is possible that 1841 (or 1845, the date of Lord Stuart de Rothesay's death) may be the date when the Empire furnishings were moved to Highcliffe.
Lord Stuart de Rothesay's collections were inherited in 1845 by his wife, Lady Elisabeth Stuart de Rothesay (née Yorke). After her death, Highcliffe House and its content passed to his second daughter, Louise, Lady Waterford (1818-1891) who maintained Highcliffe. She left the house and its collections to 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 content from his father-in-law. The Abingdons sold Highcliffe and most of its contents in 1949 but retained this piece, and all other pieces, of the group which became the V&A Hole bequest. After her husband's death in 1963, Lady Abingdon lived 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.

The object incorporates earlier elements of French giltwood and gilt-bronze. The dragon legs are finely carved and may derive from a genuine Régence table. They are joined by a coarsely moulded x -shaped stretcher, which derives from the design of Louis XV chair stretchers. The frieze may be partially old and appears rough within; the lower edge of each long side shows an inset section of newer wood and this is carved with a mixture of Régence and Rococo motifs, interrupted in the centre of each side with a square gilt-bronze patera, bolted through the frieze and set in an awkward reserve with an arched top that suggests a circular mount was first intended. These pateras derive from (and may be the casts from) original mounts of the Louis XIV period.
The sunflower scrolling mount in the recessed panels of the frieze is the same model as the mount found on the frieze of a semi-circular commode of the 1780s stamped "STOCKEL" in the museum's collection (W. 22-1958), but also on a 19th-century table in the style of Weisweiler sold at Christie's, Singapore, 1 October 1995, lot 939. The swan corner mounts are of a particularly strong bulbous form. They would seem to date from the Empire period, but their origin is untraced. The black-gound pietre dure slab was probably acquired new for the creation of this table in the 1830s.

A small giltwood table, with a variation on this leg design (with the curled end of the table forming the foot) was in the collection of Mrs David Gubbay in 1929, when it was show at the exhibition at Landsdowne House in aid of the Invalid Children's Association, and published in A.J.B. Wace, Illustrated Catalogue of the Loan Exhibition of English Decorative Art at Lansdowne House, February 17th to 28th, 1929, no. 320. That table apparently carried the figure of a crab, from the arms of the Bridges family. It was described as 'Possibly French, Louis XIV'. The same table, or a very similar one, is now at Houghton Hall, Norfolk, coming from the collection of Philip Sassoon.

The Gubbay table was described in the exhibition catalogue as "Possibly French, Louis XIV" which was presumably what Lord Stuart de Rothesay thought this was when he acquired it. An identical table (almost certainly the same one) was shown in the Saloon at Houghton in 1994 illustrations. However, Lord Rothesay may have been seeing in this table a more contemporary and local exoticism.

Incorporating earlier elements of French giltwood and gilt-bronze

Attribution note: REPAIRS: Later glueblocks inside the corners of the frieze. If paterae bolts are loosened on the long sides, there is an ungilded patch under each. Pin holes are clearly visible at the lower edges and gilded over (badly) in the arch above, suggesting an originally different mount on a raised panel between the runs of the scroll mounts. On the short sides the paterae also show bare wood behind, but no evidence of earlier mounts.

This English early 19th-century centre table of carved giltwood incorporates earlier elements of French giltwood and gilt-bronze. The dragon legs are finely carved, and may derive from a genuine early 18th-century Régence-style table. However, the swan corner mounts are of a particularly strong bulbous form and would seem to date from ca. 1800–20 in France. The black-ground pietra dura (hardstone) slab in turn was probably acquired new for the creation of this table in the 1830s. The table was bought by Lord Stuart de Rothesay, most likely to furnish his country house, Highcliffe Castle in Dorset. It is not clear whether he saw the table as an interesting example of contemporary exoticism or whether he collected it as a fashionable piece of 'antique' furniture.

W.14:1, 2-1987