Console table of carved pine, painted dark brown, with a top of verde antico marble. The S-scroll legs are joined at the top with carved, tasseled lambrequins (shaped, hanging pieces of wood, imitating cloth), with three carved cherub heads, one at the top of each leg and one in the centre, below the frieze of lambrequins.

Console table of carved pine, painted dark brown, with a top of verde antico marble. The S-scroll legs are joined at the top with carved, tasseled lambrequins (shaped, hanging pieces, imitating cloth), with three carved cherub heads, one at the top of each leg and one in the centre, below the frieze of lambrequins.
The two legs are of broken S-form and curve backwards at the base. At the top each ends in a naturalistically carved head of a cherub, the wings extending onto the frieze at each side. Between the legs is a third cherub head, with outspread winds, above symmetrical scrolls of foliage that join the legs. The frieze of the table is carved with lambrequins, each ending with a tassel, and with tassels between. All thes hang freely and can move. The wooden top of the table has a moulded edge carved at the centre and on the outset area above each leg with recessed oval panels with foliage. On this sits a slab of verde antico marble.

Purchased from W.H. Ferry, Cowley Grove Private Hotel, Cowley Road, Uxbridge for £162.10. See Registered File 63/1789. At the same time, Temple Newsam House, Leeds, purchased the pair to this table. It was noted that the two tables 'must originally have been gilded'.

See; Christopher Gilbert, Furniture at Temple Newsam House and Lotherton (Leeds: National Art-Collections Fund and Leeds Art Collections Fund, 1978), vol. II, no. 548, p. 425, where Christopher Gilbert suggested 'that the pair may have served as credence tables, on either side of the altar in a Flemish church, where they would have been painted to match the walls. The design resembles engravings by André-Charles Boulle and Daniel Marot published in the latter's Ornemantes, n.d.'

Peter Thornton, Keeper of Furniture and Woodwork, suggested in the 1970s that the fact that this table was carved in pine made an origin in the Low Countries less likely, and suggested that it had been made in one of the German states. Heinrich Kreisel, Die Kunst des deutschen Möbels (Munich, 1970) in vol. II illustrates two console tables with carved lambrequins (pl. 2, from the chapel at Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin, possibly by Charles King, before 1714; and a table frin Dresden, possibly from Schloss Moritzburg, of about 1715. Neither are otherwise very close in form to this table and in general, German tables of this dates do not show the naturalistic carving of cherubs that is such a feature of this table.

Residences Memorables De l'incomparable Heros de nôtre Siecle ou Representation exact des Edifices et Jardins de Son Altesse Serenissime Monseigneur Le Prince Eugene Francois Duc de Savoye et de Piemont ...... Published by J. Wolff, Augsburg, 1731-4, a collection of 102 engravings, in 7 sections, of the architecture, gardens and interiors of the Belvedere Palace, Vienna, shows, in Pt III, plate 7, the Painted Cabinet, also with console tables with friezes of lambrequins.

When this table was purchased by the Museum in 1963, Temple Newsam House, Leeds, bought the pair to it. The two tables were clearly made for a church or chapel, as indicated by the cherubs' heads. They were possibly designed to be used as credence tables, small tables on which the bread and wine were placed at the beginning of the Eucharist service or Mass. They were originally thought to have come from the area of modern Belgium, but if they had been made in one of the great carving centres such as Liège, they would probably have been made in oak. As they were made in pine, it is probably more likely that they were made in one of the German states. A number of of German tables of the same period show friezes carved with lambrequins (the hanging sections, that are modelled on fabric pieces), but they are not otherwise close to these tables. The carving of the tassels as free-hanging is an unusual feature.

W.12:1-2-1963