A pair of Swedish carved giltwood and gesso pier tables

with rectangular breche violette marble tips, above a panelled frieze with inset carved with leaves, on fluted turned legs with guilloche-carved collars 

Pehr Ljung ( 1743-1819) was an ornamental carver, furniture amd mirror maker who studied at the Stockholm Academy and under his father the ornament carver Johan Ljung. He specialised in carved giltwood furniture in the late Gustavian style and was particualrly renowned for his finely carved mirrors and console tables, the latter often with porphyry tops.  

He became  professor of the Academey and his carved decorations can be seen at the Royal Palaces of Hylinge, Haga, Tullgarm amongst others. He particualrly worked at the Royal Palace at Stockholm from 1792 when new decorations were being carried out for Duke Charles to the designs of Louis Masreliez ( H.Groth, Neo classicism in the North, London, 1990, pp.28-29). The present pair of console tables are of very similar form with much of the same carved detail as a pair of tables shown illustrated Massimo Listri/Daniel Rey, Slott och Salar i Sverige, p165. which  illustrates the house of Duke Fredrik Adolfs (Gustav III brother), Tullgarn Castle, the Grand Bed Chamber, with a pair of console tables known to be by Pehr. Ljung. A further example by Ljung can be seen, similar to the present table in `The Carousel Room' in the Drottningholm Court Theatre.