A George III carved mahogany serving table, circa 1770

This impressive serving table is almost certainly the pair to a table formerly at Stapleford Hall, Leicestershire (illustrated in the Dining Room in Christopher Hussey, ‘Stapleford Park, Leicestershire, The Seat of Lieut.-Col. John Gretton, M.P.’, Country Life, 23 August 1924, p. 295, fig. 18 and sold Christie’s London, Noble & Private Collections, The Property of the Trustees of Lord Gretton, Removed from Stapleford Park, 27 October 2015, lot 204¹).

It is conceivable the tables were supplied to Bennet Sherrard, 3rd Earl of Harborough (1709-1770) shortly before his death, as the almost derelict Jacobean house underwent a period of renovation between 1768 and 1769. Alternatively, and perhaps most likely, the tables could have been supplied post-1770 when his brother, Robert Sherard, succeeded as 4th Earl (1719–1799). It was under his tenure that the house was most significantly extended and ‘Capabiltity’ Brown was paid to provide plans to landscape the garden in 1775.

The exquisite neoclassical plasterwork ceiling of the Entrance Hall – the central medallion depicting the Death of Patroclus – is one of the few surviving elements from this phase of decoration and dates to circa 1776, the year the foundation stone of the ‘modern’ part of the house was laid (illustrated Hussey, op. cit., p. 294, fig. 15). The scrolling tendrils found on the carved tablet of the present serving table recall similar motifs found in the fine stuccowork and the bold architectural form suggests the table was conceived by an architect-designer in the tradition of Robert Adam as part of a decorative scheme. Interestingly, George Richardson (1737/8-c. 1813) was commissioned by the 4^th Earl to build St Mary Magdalene's Church at Stapleford, and who is perhaps better known for his extensive publications on architecture including Book of Ceilings (1776). Regrettably, there is no record of the craftsman involved in the Stapleford Park commission of the 1770s, although the quality of materials employed and execution of the design point to a furniture-maker of some distinction.

¹ The serving table illustrated Hussey, op. cit., p. 295, fig. 18 and sold Christie’s 27 October 2015, lot 204 is identical in its form and dimensions although is lacking two legs as observed in Christie’s cataloguing.