So many kinds of tables are there that it may help to try and put them into families. Originally, of course, one sat down to one’s fodder at a simple plank ontrestles, and from this developed the so-called “refectory” table, in oak in England and in walnut on the Continent. The Elizabethan bulb turning has already been mentioned; thus early too appeared the drawer top table, with a panel which can be withdrawn, rife in Victorian reproduction. In Jacobean and Cromwellian times, bulb turning diminished itself to a simple baluster or bobbin, while the spiral or barley-sugar turning usually called “Jacobean” really dates from Restoration times fifty years later.

The age of oak also claims a good many of the famous gate-leg family, very popular in the small rooms of the Commonwealth period (1649-60), and also occasionally to be found in mahogany or walnut. Some people have been put off this family by the sight of so many shoddy modern reproductions, but there is a character and fine balance about the originals which is unmistakable and captivating. If the proportions of a genuinely old gate- leg look wrong, suspect that somebody has put together parts of different ones. Close attention to such items as the dowels (which should stick out slightly) and marks left by centuries of swinging the gate in and out, will help you in your search for original pieces.

There are, of course, other types of expanding dining tables, including the early type with semicircular or square flaps and the rather later two-pillar table (much beloved of the Edwardians and very well made by them indeed) with a central removable piece: these are now in fabulous demand. There is also the much more adaptable (and at the moment cheaper) version whereby “D” ends are given additional leaves or central extensions also having drop leaves. A complete specimen can give you several tables in one; but they are rare birds.

Antique Collector MagazineOne of the most interesting of the families, which you will find from all periods, is the small tripod table, first called “pillar and claw” because of the way the feet were incurved. But later they were given all kinds of feet, one thing common to them all being the satisfying way in which the tripod—unlike four legs—sits firmly on uneven floors; no doubt they were designed to do just that.

These tripod tables first became popular with the spread of tea-drinking in high places, and from these days dates the “piecrust” edge is a Chippendale feature—which is so much reproduced today. Many of these tables had their tops on a hinge, so that when not in use they could stand against a wall and show off the fine graining or marquetry of their tops.

There were many other kinds of what we should now call “occasional” tables. All seen at Peckham Rye on the same day, could not possibly be more different in style and materials, and I have no doubt that all of them will find a purchaser who knows “just where they will fit”. The top one could be a bedside table or, with the flaps up, do for a sewing machine. The second one puzzles me, but the intricate spiral carving of the legs suggests a foreign source, perhaps Dutch or German. But there is no mistaking the third one for anything other than a typical French gueridon, a kind of round table which comes in every size from a simple stand for a candle, with a galleried top, to something quite large. This one is in ornate French nineteenth-century “Louis Quinze” reproduction, with gilt cherubs perched on the stretchers and the cabriole legs. One of the fascinating things about pieces like this is to wonder how on earth they got to Peckham.

Victorians, of course, were inveterate makers and buyers of occasional tables, for they liked to fill their many rooms with displayed trinkets, photographs and the like. Some have their origins in what one might call the “small flap” family, which roughly divides into the “Pembroke” and the “Sofa” table. The Pembroke is a delightful little affair which is said to have been originally designed for a Countess of that title: it has two flaps, sometimes rectangular, sometimes rounded, which mount up on to brackets—when they can be used as small individual breakfast tables. But they are fragile little things, so be careful who you sit at them.

The sofa table seems to have sprung from the four-legged Restoration table with stretchers and bobbin or barley sugar legs, much reproduced by the earliest Victorians. Later this appeared with flaps, but as a longer affair than the Pembroke and usually mounted not upon legs but trestles connected by stretchers either at the foot or halfway up. The eighteenth-century types are in enormous demand just now as dressing-tables one graced with a swinging toilet mirror.

In Regency times and later the flaps seem to have been dispensed with, as shown in our two other sofa tables.

Tables especially designed for both work and play are still to be found in the shops; fascinatingly ingenious many of them are. Moreover their often highly complicated arrangements ensure that the workmanship, of whatever period, is good—otherwise they would not function.

Most worktables have a pouch or bag hanging below, often in pleated silk or soft leather. Sometimes the pouch is enclosed in a hexagonal or octagonal wooden case. In Regency times there were a great many with a hinged table top showing compartments, sometimes with pull-out trays, fitted for accessories.

The early games tables usually had hinged flaps which could be reversed, one side for cards the other for taking tea, the legs swinging back for supports. Later there were drawers for accessories, or perhaps hinged flaps at the end of the table to carry the games accessories. Often the centre chessboard slides back to show a well, with a backgammon board in it, and there may be little trays to take candles or wells to take counters.

The games table in Tunbridge Ware, a kind of mosaic work in wood, with designs and even pictures made up from hundreds of little pieces of different coloured woods arranged in blocks and sawn off in sheets of veneer.

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