Side table
Category
Furniture
Date
circa 1700
Materials
Pine carcass, ebonised and gilded wood, jasper marble top
Measurements
82 x 174.5 x 86 cm
Place of origin
Florence
Order this imageCollection
Petworth House and Park, West Sussex
NT 485414
Summary
A large Florentine side table, circa 1700, with black and gold decoration (re-decorated in the 19th century), the Italian Jasper marble top above five square-sections baluster legs and toupie feet, joined by a shaped stretcher, the fifth leg in the centre. This table forms part of a larger set of three tables with a pair (NT 485383.1-2). They are almost identical tables at the difference that the present one has a elaborate stretcher. They are thought to have been brought to Petworth House by the 6th Duke of Somerset (1662-1748) in the first decades of the 18th century. The Jasper top which does not fit perfectly onto the table frame might be one of the two supplied by Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721) in 1695 as per the accounts : "To Mr Gibbons for two fine Jaspar Stone Tables 6f. long x 3f. x 1/2 over eache £40".
Provenance
Recorded at Petworth after the death of the 6th Duke of Somerset (1662-1748). Two are described in the 1764 inventory after the death of the Second Earl of Egremont (1710-1763), one in the Carved Room: "One large black and gilt slab fraime with 5 legs with a marble slab on", another in the Green Drawing Room:"One large Black and gilt slab fraime with 5 legs with a marble slab on (...) with the edges moulded". Thence by descent, until the death in 1952 of the 3rd Lord Leconfield, who had given Petworth to the National Trust in 1947, and whose nephew and heir, John Wyndham, 6th Lord Leconfield and 1st Lord Egremont (1920-72) arranged for the acceptance of the major portion of the collections at Petworth in lieu of death duties (the first ever such arrangement) in 1956 by H.M.Treasury.
References
Rowell 2012 : Christopher Rowell, Petworth, The People and the Place, Scala, 2012