Walnut, French c1600

Lower section of a cabinet. A plain top with moulded edges, containing a drawer, the front of which projects in the centre carved with a moulding and dentil band, and with a brass handle plate decorated with a cherub head. Under the drawer is a projecting moulding resting on 8 turned legs in the form of columns with square capitals and bases arranged in pairs and connected at the top by scrolls, leaves and pendant bosses, and at the bottom by rectangular stretchers. Below the stretchers are 8 flattened ball feet.

Acquired from Emile Peyre of 146 Avenue Malakoff, Paris, at the price of £25

Listed in Peyre's house as no. 247 "Small black table with 8 legs; Henri II" in a typed version of the 'Inventory of the contents rooms [sic] containing that part of Monsieur Peyre's Collection, iron-work and wood-work which he is willing to sell. The rooms are all on the ground floor of the house.' The inventory is numbered 1-329, with description and price, arranged by room; it was drawn up in early March 1895 by Thomas Armstrong (Director for Art 1881-98) and Caspar Purdon Clarke (Assistant Director and from 1896 Director of the Art Museum, later Director of the Metropolitan Museum, New York).
Located in the passage marked A in an annotated sketch plan of the ground floor of Peyre's house, which apparently accompanied a letter dated 28/2/1895 from Armstrong to Major General Sir John Donnelly (secretary of the Science and Art Department).

Although described on acquisition as a table, and apparently presented as such in Peyre's house, this is the stand or support to a late 16th century Parisian cabinet broadly similar in style to V&A W.206-1910.

802-1895