AN EARLY GEORGE III MAHOGANY PEMBROKE TABLE

The design derives from Thomas Chippendale's design for a 'Breakfast Table' in The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1754, pl.XXXIII. Chippendale published his highly influential pattern book in three editions from 1754 - 1762. From 1763 he collaborated with Matthias Darly to produce 161 plates representing 'the most elegant and useful designs of household furniture in the most fashionable taste' and this first folio volume was subscribed to by both patrons and craftsmen in London and the Provinces.

Perhaps nowhere is the contemporary influence of Chippendale's pattern book more clearly revealed than at Dumfries House, where both Samuel Smith and Alexander Peter supplied furniture that directly copied Chippendale's Director patterns. Interestingly the former supplied a 'mahogany nettwood Breakfast Table with a draw' in 1756 at a cost of £3.3s which displays the same distinctive chamfered leg (Dumfries House, Christie's house sale catalogue, 12 & 13 July 2007, lot 54 and C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. II, p. 220, fig. 401).