A GEORGE II GILTWOOD AND EBONISED EAGLE CONSOLE TABLE

This marble-topped table reflects the eighteenth-century ‘antiquarian’ taste for 'Palladian' style, promoted by the Rome-trained artist William Kent (d. 1748), who served in the King's Architectural Board of Works, and provided illustrations for the poet Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's Odyssey. The golden table frame recalls Ovid's Metamorphoses or Loves of the Gods, and the history of the shepherd Ganymede, who was born aloft by an eagle to serve as Jupiter's cup-bearer. A related eagle-borne table is illustrated beneath a sconce candle-branch mirror in the 1739 trade-sheet issued by the Edinburgh cabinet-maker Francis Brodie, who in that same year supplied the Duke of Gordon with A marble table, supported by an eagle, gilt, in burnished gold (F. Bamford, 'Dictionary of Edinburgh Wrights and Furniture Makers', Furniture History, vol. XIX, 1983, plate 24a). A closely related 19th century model was formerly at Duchray Castle, Perthshire (see F. Lewis Hinckley, The More Significant Regency Furniture 1800-1830, New York, 1991, plate 36).