A REGENCY BRASS-INLAID CALAMANDER, EBONY AND EBONIZED GAMES TABLE

This table may form part of a larger documented commission supplied by George Oakley for Charles Madryll Cheere at Papworth Hall, Cambridge, after 1809. A games table of virtually identical form from Papworth Hall, subsequently inherited by Mrs. Stileman is illustrated in R. Edwards, ed., The Dictionary of English Furniture, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1954, vol. III, p. 202, fig. 42. A nest of tables also probably from this commission with the same distinctive brass inlay in ebony on a calamander ground was sold anonymously in at Christie's New York, 21 January 1999, lot 476.

George Oakley (d.1840) worked in partnership with various cabinet-makers including George Shackleton and George Seddon, producing furniture in the Grecian taste and specializing in 'buhl' inlay (Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, 1986, pp.658-660). Oakley began his business in St. Paul's Church Yard in the 1780s and in 1799 was granted a Royal warrant after receiving a visit from Queen Charlotte and other members of the Royal family, upon which '...her MAJESTY, the Duke and Duchess of YORK, and the PRINCESSES, &c., highly approved of the splendid variety which has justly attracted the notice of the fashionable world' (Morning Chronicle, May 1799).