{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O8226"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O8226/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2017JU0376/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2017JU0376/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"high","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2017JU0376","copyright":"©Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2018KY6204","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":{"_iiif_pres":"https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O8226/manifest.json","_alt_iiif_pres":[]}},"record":{"systemNumber":"O8226","accessionNumber":"W.21:1, 2-1945","objectType":"Pier table","titles":[],"summaryDescription":"Tables of this form, supported by the figure of a carved eagle, are amongst the best-known forms of side table of the middle years of the 18th century in England.  By tradition they are associated with the designer William Kent (1685-1748), but no one has ever been able to come up with any documentary evidence for this connection and no such tables were supplied for houses with which he was associated. The earliest known tables of this form are a pair supplied to the Duke of Beaufort in 1731 by the carver John Phillips and such tables seem to have been at the peak of fashion in the later 1730s. The form was revived in the Regency period and in the early 20th century such tables were highly popular with collectors and decorators and were frequently reproduced. ","physicalDescription":"A giltwood console table, the support in the form of an eagle with outstretched wings, perched on a rocky base, above a marbled plinth, the frieze carved with Vitruvian scrolls, the slab of dark green (possibly <i>verde antico</i>) marble. English.\nThe table frame is of softwood, carved, gessoed and gilded and marbled. The rectangular plinth, with outset corners, is carved with a formal leaf motif along the moulded top edge, which is oil gilded.  The sides of the plinth and the flat top surface are painted to imitate the marble slab. On the plinth is a rocky base for the eagle, painted black. The eagle's body is gilded, the claws painted black. It perches with its right foot higher than the left, and turns its head to its left. The eagle supports an entablature in carved and gilded pine, the narrow architrave carved with rosettes at standard intervals, the frieze with a running Vitruvian scroll (wave pattern) in relief against a ground with stamping of circles in the gesso, the cornice carved with egg-and-dart. \nThe slab of marble is rectangular and the edges are straight cut, with no moulding. \nThe back of the eagle is roughly marked with feathers. It is not clear whether there is any carving for this but it seems more likely that this was done only in the gesso (chalk and glue) layer.  It was presumably designed to give some impression of carving if glimpsed from the side, but the effect is very perfunctory. The back of the eagle and other parts of the table not normally visible have been painted with ochre, renewed in parts with a more brownish paint that was added after the extra support (see below) was added. It was noted that this was in place when the table was acquired by the Museum. \n\n<u>Construction</u>\nThe base and architrave are joined with pins and glue. The figure of the eagle is made in 6 sections: the body in a back and front section, glued together before carving; two separate sections for the legs (the claws carved as part of the rocky base); and the two wings , which are carved with the grain running horizontally, and which are nailed into a shallow recess formed in the back section of the main body. The back of the eagle is reinforced with a shaped iron strap, running vertically from the mid-height of the body down to the back of the plinth.  This is attached with five countersunk screws which appear to be hand-made. The architrave is joined, presumably with mortise-and-tenon joints at the front and rear corners. The cornice section (mitred at the front corners) is a separate section on the sides and front, simply glued to the top surface of the main frame. The back rail is thinner than the visible frame elements and shows multiple holes for past attachments to the wall. The architrave section is joined to the tip of each wing and to the head of the eagle with iron fixings with a screw thread on the lower part, the upper part as a flat bracket, pierced with two countersunk holes for screws that attach to the inside of the architrave. The date of these fixings is uncertain. At the front of the architrave section, above the eagle's head, are two large screw holes, perhaps for a fixing for an original central strut. Any fixings for this on the back rail are currently guesswork, as the centre of the back rail is now covered with a flat, baluster-shaped wooden support, which is screwed to the back rail and continues to ground level, where is it joined to the back of the plinth by a short section of wood. There are not signs of attachment for side brackets, which are sometimes found on such tables, although there are random screw holes. \n\n<u>Condition</u>\nThe table has probably been re-gilded or re-painted more than once, as the blurred outline of the circles stamped on the background of the frieze suggest. It is possible that the marbling of the plinth was added to the table in the early years of the 19th century, but only analysis of the paint layers could establish this clearly. ","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Unknown","id":"A1848"},"association":{"text":"maker","id":"x40240"},"note":""}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[],"artistMakerPeople":[],"materials":[{"text":"soft-wood","id":"AAT12510"},{"text":"marble","id":"AAT11443"}],"techniques":[{"text":"joinery","id":"x36614"},{"text":"carving","id":"AAT53149"},{"text":"gilding","id":"AAT230058"},{"text":"marbling","id":"AAT53812"}],"materialsAndTechniques":"Softwood, with carved and gilded gesso decoration and marbling.","categories":[{"text":"Furniture","id":"THES48948"}],"styles":[{"text":"Palladian","id":"AAT21161"}],"collectionCode":{"text":"FWK","id":"THES48597"},"images":["2017JU0376","2018KY6204"],"imageResolution":"high","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"001","id":"THES342844"},"free":"","case":"","shelf":"","box":""},{"current":{"text":"001","id":"THES343614"},"free":"","case":"","shelf":"","box":""}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"Pier table","id":"AAT40000"}],[{"text":"Marble slab","id":""}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"","note":""},{"apprise":"","note":""},{"apprise":"","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"Britain","id":"x32019"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"ca. 1735-1740","earliest":"1730-01-01","latest":"1740-12-31"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[],"creditLine":"","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Height","value":"907","unit":"mm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"990","unit":"mm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Depth","value":"502","unit":"mm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""}],"dimensionsNote":"","marksAndInscriptions":[],"objectHistory":"Purchased from Moss Harris &amp; Sons, 44 New Oxford Street, London WC1, October 1945 for £145 (Registerd File 45/1526 on Nominal File: MA/1/H857 Harris M Sons). The original invoice notes that the table was stock number K11605 and it was recorded that the marble had been damaged.\n\nHistorical significance: William Kent  (1685-1748) architect and designer is generally given credit for the introduction of tables with carved eagle supports of this fashion but in fact none of this form are documented in any of the houses for which he is known to have designed furniture.  The idea arose, perhaps, because, in a tailpiece engraving for Alexander Pope's translation of the <i>Odyssey</i> (1725-6), Kent showed two eagles fighting on a table, almost like a very energetic sculpture, but certainly not part of the design of the table (vol. I, book 2, p.93), illustrated in <u>William Kent. Designing Georgian Britain</u>, ed. Susan Weber (Yale University Press, New Have and London, 2013, p. 422). Eagles were an emblem of the god Zeus (known to the Romans as Jupiter), symbolising power and victory. They were naturally absorbed by the classically educated governing classes of what was often seen as the new Augustan age. Such a design was particularly appropriate for a pier table - often made in pairs - which could be placed between the windows.  Such pairs usually had eagles facing in the opposite directions (see a pair sold Sotheby's New York 18 October 1997 lot 356). \n\nJohn Cornforth, in <i>Early Georgian Interiors</i> (London: Yale University Press, 2004), p.186, summarises the origin of these tables: 'Understandably, the eagle table is a form invariably attributed to William Kent, because the genesis of the the idea appears as one of his decorations to Pope's Odessey (<i>Fig</i>. 166 [published in 1725]); but in fact there are no documented references or examples in houses where he is known to have worked. At present, the earliest recorded reference to the type is in an account of Thomas Moore with Dudley Ryder in 1734, which mentions \"an Eagle frame &amp; Top Carved and guilded in burnished gold\" costing £12; and with it a \"large Carvd &amp; guilt sconce Pedmt frame with a new glass\", also costing £12. That may be slightly later than the eagle table at Badminton by Phillips referred to above [this refers to the previous paragraph, where he notes a pair of eagle tables supplied to the 3rd Duke of Beaufort between 1728 and 1733 by John Phillips, a carver]. Slightly later, in the 1730s, Roger Morris showed a pair of eagle tables with glasses in his design for the window wall of the drawing-room at Adderbury House (<i>Fig</i>. 252) when it belonged to the 2nd Duke of Argyll. He proposed other tables in a Kentian manner for that house, presumably to be produced by carvers who had worked with Kent and Flitcroft. An illustration of an eagle table appears on the bill head of a Scottich cabinet-maker, Francis Brodie of Edinburgh, in 1739, and he probably supplied the one now at Innes House, Morayshire (<i>Fig</i>. 251). Another early one is \"the side board Table Supported by and Eagle\" supplied to the Duke of Hamilton and now at Holyrood.'\n\nAdam Bowett, in <i>Early Georgian Furniture 1715-1740</i> (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors' Club, 2009), pp. 228-23, gives another summary of the early form, also making clear that the connection to Kent is traditional but not supported by documentation. \n\nOther designers used the motif, including John Vardy, whose drawing shows an eagle between two corner consoles (a table of this form was at St Giles's House, Dorset). No published engraved design for such a table is known (not one is illustrated in Elizabeth White's compendium, <u>Pictorial Dictionary of British 18th Century Furniture Design </u>(Woodbridge, Antique Collectors Club, 1990) despite the popularity of versions of the design. Nonetheless, the form was very popular and many versions of the eagle table survive.  In the 19th and early 20th centuries the form was again popular with collectors and decorators and was reproduced frequently. \n\nThe use of eagles' heads and clawed feet have a long history in furniture. R.W. Symonds wrote on 'English Eagle and Dolphin Console Tables' in <i>Antiques</i>, vol. XVIII (October 1930), p. 296.  In <i>The Antique Collector</i>, September-October 1945, pp. 155-159, he wrote on 'The Eagle Motive in English Furniture' and quoted a contemporary portrait of Edward VI (1547-53), then in the possession of Sir Algernon Osborne, which showed and X-frame chair with clawed eagles' feet clasping globes. He discussed the continuation of the motif in the 18th century on chairs, candlestands and mirrors, until the middle of the century. G. Bernard Hughes wrote 'The Eagle under the Table' in <i>Country Life</i>, 22 July 1971, pp. 224-225, carrying the story forward by illustrating Regency versions of the eagle as table support. The eagle was understandably popular in late-18th century furniture made in the first years of American independence. \n\nThe carving of the eagle - in particular the undercutting of the claws and feathers is fine, although the cutting of the tail feathers is less good and that on the back of the figure of the bird is distinctly perfunctory and may be largely relief marking in the gesso. The paint on the base has not been scientifically investigated and it is possible, as John Hardy pointed out in 1986, that it was added to the table in the Regency period, when such tables were again fashionable.\n\nA particularly fine, larger version of this tabble, also with a Vitruvian-scroll frieze, is in the collection of the City Art Museum of St Louis, Missouri (accession no. 14:33).  It was acquired in 1933 from French &amp; Co., New York. Such tables, all with subtle differences, appear regularly in the salerooms, and versions exist in many British country houses.\n\n\n","historicalContext":"","briefDescription":"A giltwood pier or console table, the support in the form of an eagle with outstretched wings, perches on a rocky base, above a marbled plinth, the frieze carved with Vitruvian scrolls, the slab of mottled green (possibly <i>verde antico</i>) marble.","bibliographicReferences":[{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"<i>Casa d'Oro</i> no. 52, 3 November 1967, illustrated. "}],"production":"","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[{"text":"eagle (bird)","id":"x30166"}],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":[],"galleryLabels":[{"text":"CONSOLE TABLE\r\nENGLISH: about 1730\r\nGilt wood, verde antiqu [sic] marble\r\nIn the style of William Kent\r\nMuseum No. W.21-1945","date":{"text":"1976","earliest":"1976-01-01","latest":"1976-12-31"}},{"text":"CONSOLE TABLE\r\nCarved, gilded and gessoed wood\r\nEnglish: about 1730","date":{"text":"1968","earliest":"1968-01-01","latest":"1968-12-31"}}],"partNumbers":["W.21:1-1945","W.21:2-1945"],"accessionNumberNum":"21","accessionNumberPrefix":"W","accessionYear":1945,"otherNumbers":[],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE","Console table","Marble slab"],"assets":[],"recordModificationDate":"2025-04-29","recordCreationDate":"1998-07-07","availableToBook":true}}