Table
17th century (made)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
This table, of richly carved and pierced ebony, is typical of a group of high quality furniture made along the Coromandel Coast in southern India and in Sri Lanka under Dutch patronage. In late 18th- and 19th-century Europe such furniture was believed to be Elizabethan and it was much sought after for houses of that period and for those built in Tudor style. Scholars believe that this table originally sat in Strawberry Hill, the Gothic Revival villa in Twickenham, London, that belonged to the renowned antiquary Horace Walpole. Although its dimensions and description do match a table in the Strawberry Hill inventory, there is nothing to confirm that this is the same piece.
Object details
| Object type | |
| Materials and techniques | Ebony, carved, pierced and turned, with teak dust shelf |
| Brief description | Table, ebony, Coromandel Coast, 1660-80. |
| Physical description | Table made of ebony, carved, pierced and turned, with teak dust shelf. |
| Dimensions |
|
| Object history | The table was originally sold at Sotheby's London, on 12 December 1980 (lot 141). It was bought by Mr Lennox-Money and sold to Jonathan Harris. It was then bought by John Hardy, former curator in the Furniture Department, V&A, from Phillips & Harris, Kensington Church Street, London, for £4,500 on 23 December 1980. In view of the table's association with Strawberry Hill, Mr Hardy sold it to the V&A for the same price. |
| Summary | This table, of richly carved and pierced ebony, is typical of a group of high quality furniture made along the Coromandel Coast in southern India and in Sri Lanka under Dutch patronage. In late 18th- and 19th-century Europe such furniture was believed to be Elizabethan and it was much sought after for houses of that period and for those built in Tudor style. Scholars believe that this table originally sat in Strawberry Hill, the Gothic Revival villa in Twickenham, London, that belonged to the renowned antiquary Horace Walpole. Although its dimensions and description do match a table in the Strawberry Hill inventory, there is nothing to confirm that this is the same piece. |
| Bibliographic reference | Jaffer, A. Furniture from British India and Ceylon: a catalogue of the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2001. ISBN 1 85177 318 5 p.138, fig.2. |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | IS.73-1981 |
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| Record created | January 23, 2004 |
| Record URL |
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