Carved gilt-wood rococo side table in the manner of Joseph Effner
of unusually shaped form, the deep frieze with hatching between gadrooned and guilloche mouldings and carved with satyr heads to the front, either side of bold pierced scrollwork and central shell, and between scrolled wings and broad trefoil upright leaf, the front legs of reversed ‘C’ scroll form, with inter-twining scaley dragons, and distinctive webbed talon feet. Largely original gilded surface. Marble top replaced. German, c. 1730.
Height 32¾" (83cm).
Width 54" (1,37m).
Depth 22¾" (58cm).
Provenance :- Francis Stonor (1900-1968). There is a pasted inventory label to the back of the table, inscribed ‘FRANCIS STONOR / Catalogued under : / Table / (Cat)alogue number : / 15’.
Francis Stonor was a renowned collector, some of his collection now displayed as a distinct collection at Stonor Park, Oxfordshire, having been left to his family after his death in 1968. His collection of silver, and especially silver-gilt, was particularly well-known.(1) A silver-gilt tray by Paul Storr which once belonged to him is now in the Gilbert Collection in the Victoria & Albert Museum.(2)
The dragons of the present table are very distinctive in the muscularity of their bodies, and most unusual in being carved so that they go through the legs of the table, rather than being entwined around the legs. The webbed talon feet, presumably meant to be dragon feet, are also very unusual, as is the bold carving of the pierced frieze.
This table is related to others by Joseph Effner (1687-1745) and François de Cuvilliés (1695-1768), both active in Southern Germany in the first half of the 18th Century. However, its very particular form is otherwise unknown and (at least to our knowledge) there are no others which closely compare to it.(3) The entwined dragons and satyr masks are features which appear on a number of other tables of this date, such as a pair of silvered consoles by Cuvilliés at Schloß Nymphenburg, Munich;(4) a pair of gilded console tables at the Neues Schloß, Scheißheim, designed by Effner and carved by Johann Adam Pichler (d. 1761);(5) a set of four gilded consoles by Cuvilliés in the Residenz, Munich;(6) and, in particular, the well-known set of five gilded consoles and related pair of consoles designed by Cuvilliés and made by Wenzeslaus Miroffsky, 1733-34, also in the Munich Residenz,in the Grüne Galerie.(7)
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Footnotes.
1) See Arthur Grimwade, ‘Mr Francis Stonor’s Collection of Silvergilt – 1’, The Connoisseur, Antique Dealers' Fair & Exhibition Number, June 1960.
2) Museum ref. ‘Loan:Gilbert.774-2008’.
3) There is a French parquetry card table, c. 1725, in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (Museum no. 75.DA.2), which bears some relation to this eccentric shape.
4) See Die Möbel der Schlösser Nymphenburg und Schleißheim, ed. Brigitte Langer, 2000, no. 35, pp. 130-132.
5) Op. cit., no. 15, pp. 90-92.
6) Die Möbel der Residenz München II, ed. Gerhard Hojer and Hans Ottomeyer, 1996, no. 31, pp. 151-154.
7) Op. cit., nos. 32 and 33, pp. 155-162.
