Pembroke table; satinwood inlaid with ebony; Britain; ca.1800

A pembroke table of satinwood veneer and satin birch(?), inlaid with ebony, crossbanded with rosewood(?), and with stringing of light and dark woods. It stands on tall, slightly concave, tapering legs, fitted with brass castors, and has round-corenered flaps, each supported on two shaped brackets. There is a single full-depth frieze drawer and a blind drawer-front at the opposite end.

The legs, possibly of solid satin birch, are joined by the frieze frame comprising upright pine rails on three sides and two flat pine rails at the end with the drawer-cavity. The two long rails (running from front to back of the table) are each built up on the underside with a further flat bar that projects on both sides -- on the outside to support the brackets for the flaps and on the inside to support the frieze-drawer. The brackets of stained beech(?) are hinged (with integral wooden hinges) from blocks that fill the step formed by the lower bar. These two built-up rails together with the upright end rail are joined (tenoned?) to the legs; the two flat rails at the drawer-cavity are then tenoned into the legs and recessed into a rebate in the lower bar of the side rails (to which they may be tenoned as well). The three upright sides are then fixed with countersunk screws to table top. The top and flaps are veneered on mahogany (the main top panel of rather poor quality) and secured to each other by four steel hinges on each side. The stepped cavetto moulding on the inside edge of the flaps turns over the reciprocal ovolo moulding along the sides of the top panel.

The drawer is constructed entirely of oak, including the drawer-front, which is veneered in satinwood and ebony, with a full-depth ebony veneer on its top edge. The sides are dovetailed to the front and back (with stopped dovetails at the front), and the laterally-grained bottom, slightly bevelled on three sides, floats in grooves in the front and sides and was originally nailed to the back. The sides are reinforced with runners, chamfered at their back edge. The back dovetails have been reinforced with pins (at the sides) and the drawer-bottom is also now pinned up to the back. A crack in the drawer-bottom has been repaired with canvas on the underside, but the crack has re-opened subsequently.
The drawer retains its original brass lock. The two ebonized handles, also apparently original, are fixed with brass bolts secured on the inside of the drawer-front with rounded brass nuts.
There are conspicuous saw-marks on the outside face of each drawer-side.

Many types of furniture only acquired their popular names (like the 'Gainsborough chair') when antique collecting became a widespread interest in the 19th and 20th centuries. However, the term 'Pembroke table' has been used for tables of this form, with side flaps and a drawer below the top, since the type was first developed in the second half of the 18th century. Thomas Sheraton described it as 'a type of breakfast table, from the name of the lady who first gave orders for one of them'. If Sheraton was right, then the first such table may have been commissioned by Elizabeth, Countess of Pembroke (wife of the 10th Earl), who was a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte and was adored by George III.

This table is similar in form to examples made from the mid-1780s, but the style of the inlaid decoration points to a date after 1800.

This object is on loan to Sewerby Hall.

W.13-1945