A PAIR OF GEORGE I MAHOGANY DROP-LEAF TABLES

The writing-tables have palm-wrapped and tapering columnar legs terminating in pad or 'round toe' feet. This elegant George I 'Roman' fashioned leg succeeded the baluster form featured on related six-legged pier-tables with folding legs, bureau-falls and drawers provided around 1700 for Boughton House, Northamptonshire (O. Brackett, An Encyclopaedia of English Furniture, London, 1927, p. 94). These library tables are likely to have been commissioned for Shirburn Castle, Oxfordshire shortly after its purchase in 1716 by the connoisseur Thomas Parker, Baron Parker of Macclesfield, later 1st Earl of Macclesfield (1667-1732).