Circular table veneered in sycamore, mahogany and satinwood, with ebonised mouldings, British, ca. 1873, designed by Owen Jones and made by Jackson & Graham

The table has a circular top, and four legs, which are shaped at the top on the outer edge, and curved to extend in towards the centre as horizontal rails, screwed into supports immediately below the table top. In the centre the horizontal rails are jointed into an octagonal column of plain mahogany, the base of which is formed as a multi-faced pyramid. Four square section stretchers join the legs to the octagonal column just above the pyramid. The legs are square in section, straight down to the level of the stretchers and then curving outwards with a small step on the outside face to form the feet.

The top of the table is veneered with concentric circles, the central one of sycamore, the next of mahogany and the outer one of satinwood, with an ebonised moulding around the edge. The legs and stretchers are veneered in mahogany with banding in sycamore and satinwood.

Given by the Home Office

This table was designed by Owen Jones and supplied by Jackson & Graham for James Mason of Eynsham Hall. It was part of a large suite of furniture designed for the drawing room, music room and card room, three interconnecting rooms which were decorated and furnished en suite. Three tables of this design are shown in Jones's coloured elevation of these rooms, two in the drawing room and one in the card room. (Drawing No. 5, Eynsham Hall, Special Collections, Reading University Library, illustrated in Owen Jones Design, Ornament, Architecture, and Theory in an Age in Transition, by Carol A. Hrvol Flores, New York 2006, pl. 4.26).

From 1946-1981 Eynsham Hall was used as a police training college. The Home Office, then responsible for the house, lent the table to the exhibition, Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Arts, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1952-3, and subsequently gave it to the Museum.

A smaller table, with an octagonal top, was advertised by an English dealer in 2009 (Paul A. Shutler, invest-in-antiques.com). It had the same arrangement of mahogany, satinwood and ebony veneers, and similar construction under the top, as the table in the Museum, but there was no known Eynsham Hall provenance. This smaller table may be one of those visible in Jones's coloured elevation of the drawing room at Eynsham Park, Drawing No. 5. Alternatively it may have been designed by Jones or made by Jackson & Graham for another commission.

Another table, with a circular top and four legs, shaped but not of the same design as the Museum's table, joined by stretchers to a central chamfered column with an acorn finial below, was with Malletts, London, in 1998. Although the veneers were also of mahogany with satinwood and ebony banding, the different design of the legs and central column suggest that this example may not be from the Eynsham Hall commission.

James Mason, a mining engineer, and his brother-in-law, Francis Tress Barry, a merchant in Bilbao, established a company, Mason and Barry, which managed the San Domingo copper mines in Portugal from 1859. The success of this investment enabled Mason to buy the Eynsham Park estate in 1866. He commissioned extensive building plans and designs for interiors and furniture from Owen Jones and the work was finished shortly before Jones's death in 1874. After Mason's death in 1903, his son, James Francis Mason, demolished the house and replaced it with a new building, designed by the architect, Ernest George, which was completed in 1908. Jones's silks were apparently rehung in the new library and dining room.

James Mason, the original owner of this table, became wealthy through his involvement in copper mining in Portugal. He commissioned designs for interiors and furniture for his home, Eynsham Hall, Oxfordshire, from the architect and designer, Owen Jones, and the work was carried out from 1872 to 1874 by the London firm of Jackson & Graham. The table is part of a suite of furniture in the Museum that was designed by Jones for three interconnecting rooms at Eynsham Hall, the drawing room, music room and card room. The shape of the table indicates that it was designed to stand away from the wall and was probably used for card playing, reading, writing or other activities. Jones used the same design of a table with a round top and a central column joined by stretchers to four shaped legs for other commissions.

CIRC.522-1953