A WILLIAM IV MAHOGANY CIRCULAR EXTENDING DINING TABLE

In March 1835, London upholsterer Robert Jupe patented a design for "an improved expanding table so constructed that the sections composing its surface may be caused to diverge from a common center and that the spaces caused thereby may be filled up by inserting leaves or filling pieces." The first examples of the table was were produced between 1835 and 1840 in partnership with John Johnstone and were stamped Johnstone, Jupe & Co., London. Several examples, as well as a detail of the mechanism, illustrate the remarkable consistence of their workshop and are reproduced in C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840, Leeds, 1996, pp. 283-285. By 1840, Robert Jupe had left the partnership to form his own firm from which point his name alone usually appears on the later, now eponymous, tables with his 'Jupe' mechanism.