A REGENCY CALAMANDER AND PARCEL-GILT MECHANICAL CARD TABLE

During the 1790s British victories over the Dutch forces in Ceylon had helped popularise the fashion for calamander wood, whose blackness well suited the contemporary 'Grecian' style. The wood was noted as lately introduced by Thomas Sheraton in The Cabinet Dictionary, 1803. In 1810 George Oakley of St Paul's Churchyard, London, supplied a four-pillared window-pier card-table and en suite sofa-table both veneered in calamander, illustrated by R. Fastnedge and M. Jourdain, Regency Furniture, rev. ed., London, 1965 (figs. 157 and 134). Other related tables were supplied by Oakley's contemporary and near-neighbour, George Simson, including a card table bearing Simson's trade label sold anonymously Christie's, London, 23 May 2012, lot 380 (£8,125 including premium).