A semi-oval side table of pine, veneered with satinwood, burr walnut and other woods, the top, frieze panels and the sides of the square-sectioned legs veneered with panels of satinwood with cross-banding; some decoration in green paint

A semi-oval side table of pine, veneered with satinwood, burr walnut and other woods, the top, frieze panels and the sides of the square-sectioned legs veneered with panels of satinwood with cross-banding. The legs are slender and tapering, with tall, waisted feet. The top is decorated with a fan-shaped ornament between borders of sprays and festoons of husks.

This must have been one of the earliest pieces of 18th-century British furniture acquired by the South Kensington Museum (the fore-runner of the V&A). Until the 1870s the Museum had bought mostly European furniture and particularly Italian. In 18667, at the Paris International Exhibition, the London firm of Wright and Mansfield, won a medal for a satinwood bookcase in the style of the 18th century, with applied plaques of Wedgwood porcelain (Museum no. 548-1868). The Museum bought the bookcase, as an example of contemporary high design, signalling a new public interest in 18th-century design, which came to dominate its purchases by the end of the 19th century.

It was the architect Robert Adam (1728-1792) who popularised the rounded form for pier tables or side tables, to stand between windows or against other walls. On window piers, they were often set below wall mirrors, that doubled the decoration of the half-round or half-oval tops by reflection. Satinwood, the golden colour of which was novel after the dark brown of mahogany, began to be highly fashionable in the 1780s and was considered particularly suitable for the areas of the house such as drawing rooms and boudoirs which were considered to be areas of female influence.

325-1878