A REGENCY PARCEL-GILT AND MAHOGANY CENTRE TABLE

The table, with its pillar raised on a hollow-sided plinth with palm-flowered trusses, is conceived in the manner of a French breakfast-table and inspired by an antique sacrificial tripod altar. The pillar's Egyptian sphinx monopodiae, issuing from palm-flowered acanthus, derives from a porcelain guridon table pattern in C. Percier and P.F.L. Fontain's, Recueil de decorations interieures, 1801 (pl.21). This in turn inspired the supports of a contemporary mahogany and partly gilt dressing-table commissioned by the connoisseur Thomas Hope (d.1832) (see T. Hope, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807 (pl.33); and J. Britton and A. Pugin, Illustrations of Public Buildings of London, 1825 , pl.2). A prototype for the present table would be the popular Empire 'bronze' perfume-burners (brle parfums) attributed to the bronzier Pierre-Philippe Thomire (see H. Ottomeyer/P. Perschel et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986 , fig.2.8.10).