A George II Mahogany Double Gate Leg Tea Table, Circa 1755

Percival D. Griffiths, by 1908;

George D. Widener, Philadelphia, thence by descent;

Christie's New York, 24 October 2013, lot 728 ($81,250);

Chris Jussel, Mystic, Connecticut

F.G. Dumas, The Frano-British Exhibition. Illustrated Review, London 1908, p.247

H. Cescinsky, English Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, n.d. [1909], vol. II, p. 363, fig. 395

H. A. Tipping, English Furniture of the Cabriole Period, London 1922, pl. XXIII

P. Macquoid and R. Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, London 1927, vol. III, p. 194, fig 31

R. Edwards, The Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture, London 1964, p. 523, fig. 22

Christian Jussel and William DeGregorio, English Furniture 1680-1760. The Percival D. Griffiths Collection, London and New Haven 2023, Vol. I no. F174 p. 169

Franco-British Exhibition, White City, London 14 May - 31 October 1908

Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928

This handsomely carved table is an excellent example of the high quality mahogany furniture produced in mid-18th century England in an elegant and restrained rococo style, a taste epitomised by the production of Thomas Chippendale's workshop and diffused through the publication of The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker's Director in 1754. A design for a similar though more exuberantly decorated games table was published by Chippendale's rivals Ince & Mayhew in plate 52 of their Universal System of Household Furniture (1762) (fig. 1).

In the first half of the 20th century this table passed through two iconic collections, those of Pericval D. Griffiths and George D. Widener. Percival D Griffiths FSA (1862-1937) assembled what is generally considered one of the greatest 20th century collections of historic English furniture. A London-born chartered accountant, Griffiths spent his early career in the United States establishing an American presence of what would become the global firm Deloitte. In 1899 he returned to England and acquired an early 18th-century house, Sandridgebury, near St Alban's, Hertfordshire, where he lived without electricity and began collecting antique furniture. From 1908 he was advised by the architect and eminent furniture historian Robert Wemyss Symonds (1889-1958), who illustrated many of Griffiths' works as representative examples in his publications. Griffiths acquired primarily walnut and mahogany furniture from the period 1680-1760, and followed Symonds's recommendation of focussing more on colour, patina, condition and quality of materials and workmanship than on historic provenance and makers' attributions, an approach that continues to be highly influential today. The Griffiths collection remains the most celebrated and consummate example of what has become known as the 'Symonds Tradition' of collecting, Following his death, Griffiths' collection was dispersed, and many important items of furniture and needlework were acquired by Judge Irwin Untermyer in New York, who donated or bequeathed the majority of his works to the Metropolitan Museum.

George D. Widener (1861-1912) was heir to the Philadelphia streetcar fortune of his father P.A.B. Widener, who had assembled one of the most important Gilded Age collections of Old Master pictures and decorative arts to fill his Horace Trumbauer-designed mansion Lynnewood Hall on Philadelphia's Main Line. George Widener along with his elder son Harry perished in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, and nearly 2,000 works from Lynnewood Hall were donated to the new National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1940. George's younger son George D. Widener Jr. (d. 1971) was also a important collector and bequeathed significant works to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, notably one of the two 'Raynham group' commodes attributed to Thomas Chippendale.