Thank you for registering for our auction! You are required to provide: 1. Deposit; 保证金待商议; 2. Copy or images of ID card (front and back) or Passport 3. Images of Credit card (front and back).
A REGENCY MAHOGANY PEDESTAL LIBRARY TABLE ATTRIBUTED TO GILLOWS, CIRCA 1810 The rectangular red leather-lined top with re-entrant corners, the centre with two ratcheted slopes, above seven variously-sized part mahogany-lined drawers, with panelled angles, the base with shaped panels and reeded angles and a hinged door enclosing a shelf, on lacquered brass paw feet with castors, the handles replaced 31? in. (80 cm.) high; 60 in. (152.5 cm.) wide; 47? in. (121 cm.) deep
This library table was probably supplied by Gillows of London and Lancaster and commissioned by Beriah Botfield Senior (1768-1813) after his marriage in 1806. The Botfield family made a number of recorded commissions from Gillows. Both Botfield Senior's brother Thomas, and his son's names appear in the Gillows archives and there is a sketch, dated 1814, for a mahogany bookcase designed for Thomas Botfield in the Estimate Sketch Books (no. 1966, Westminster City Archives). Like the library table, Thomas' bookcase also has hollowed corners on the panels. The double reeding around the panels on the library table is typical of Gillows' work.
The design of the present table reflects the transformation taking place of the English library as it gradually transformed into a living-room at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. Instead of being of substantial kneehole-desk form, its design relates to that of the fashionable Drawing-Room centre table. Its leather top, which conceals hinged and ratcheted reading stands, is supported on a pedestal, whose columnar supports terminate in golden 'griffin' paws in the Roman fashion promoted around 1800 by the publications of the court architect, Charles Heathcote Tatham (d. 1842).
The library table closely relates to two of Thomas Sheraton's patterns. One was for a Drawing-Room 'Loo Table' that was published in his Cabinet Dictionary, 1803 (pl. 57), the other was for a circular-topped 'Library Table' published in 1804 in his Cabinet Encyclopaedia, (pl. 8 of Tables). The table is ornamented, in the Egyptian manner, with reeded mouldings enriching its edge and pedestal columns, while the frieze is embellished with reeded and hollowed-cornered tablets. Reeds also frame the pedestal's tablets of richly-figured mahogany, and are shaped to the same form as the profile of the table top. Such ornaments of reed and hollow-cornered tablets also featured on another of Sheraton's patterns for a 'Pedestal' that was published in his Dictionary (pl. 59). Similar castor-concealing claws had featured in Sheraton's 1802 design for a 'Library Table' whose Roman-tripod pedestal comprised the mythical eagle-winged lion, sacred to Apollo, Greek god of poetry (ibid., pl. 55).