Thomas Moore
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Lot 421TP
A Regency mahogany 'Imperial' extending dining table attributed to Thomas Butler
17 – 18 July 2019, 10:00 BST
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £2,550 inc. premium
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A Regency mahogany 'Imperial' extending dining table attributed to Thomas Butler
Circa 1810, with a rounded rectangular top, on eight detachable ring turned and reeded tapering legs terminating in brass cappings and castors, with two leaves, 214cm wide x 133cm deep x 73cm high, (84in wide x 52in deep x 28 1/2in high)
Footnotes
The present lot is very similar to one which sold Christie's, London, 23 May 2018, The Collector: English Furniture, lot 55 and both in turn relate closely to others by Thomas Butler, cabinet maker of Catherine Street, London.
Butler, who flourished at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century, established a fine reputation for manufacturing a wide assortment of patent furniture. Some of his output is recorded on a pictorial hand bill featuring beds, chairs and dining tables with detachable legs, as on the offered lot. Most items in his own words being: 'particularly adapted for travelling and exportation'. Comparable tables, some with Butler's engraved brass plaque, appear illustrated in C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture, 1700-1840, 1996, Leeds, pp.'s 128-130, pl.'s 173-178.
Butler was a contemporary of Gillows who, in 1804, illustrated and patented their 'Imperial' dining-table in which a variable number of loose leaves were fitted between fixed end leaves, a design which, within a few years, largely superceded most earlier ones. Initially such tables had an arrangement of as many as ten or twelve legs to support the central leaves when extended, but as the design was improved and the mechanism became more sturdy the central grouping of legs were removed. The form remained popular and another drawing of an improved version of the table by Ferguson & Co, one of the successors to the Gillow family business, is dated as late as 1849 in Susan E. Stuart, Gillows of Lancaster and London, 1730-1840, Vol I, 2008, Woodbridge, pp.'s 243-6.
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