Eating tables have been large and thick set, the baluster or bulbous legs being held by strong stretchers which served as foot rests. The frieze is usually carved, or extra hardly ever, as within the draw-top desk within the Victoria and Albert Museum, inlaid; whereas typically the frieze is carved on the entrance solely, the perimeters being left plain. In late sixteenth-century stretchers there’s a projection on the highest floor making it T-shaped in part, a kind which supplies place to an oblong part within the early seventeenth century. The desk leg exhibits the fullest improvement of the bulbous assist. Creating from the knop, the big bulbous type was established within the late years of the sixteenth century and existed for nearly a century, for an oak desk within the possession of Mr. Frank Inexperienced, dated 1668, has this bulbous gadrooned leg. An uncommon variant is the dropped bulb. The columnar leg seems within the final decade of the sixteenth century, and is very attribute of the early seventeenth century. In some examples, as within the oak desk in St Michael’s Church, St Albans, the leg has a quasi-classical capital. Baluster legs, turned and ringed, changed the bulbous leg within the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. An elongated peg-top assist, often left plain and adorned with rings, was borrowed from Holland within the late seventeenth century.
Small tables to be used in parlors diverse within the form of the highest, which was oval, spherical, or octagonal. Carefully comparable are the octagonal desk, dated 1606, within the possession of the Carpenters’ Firm, and Elias Ashmole’s desk at Oxford. In each the slender bulbous legs are fluted, and the arcading is notched; whereas within the Carpenters’ Firm’s desk there’s a moulded surrounding and plain cross stretcher. Folding or flap tables, during which the flap is supported by a swinging leg, have been mild in make, and infrequently set in opposition to the wall till required. Such tables seem within the manuscript stock taken in 1569 of products at Tannis, in Hertfordshire, and in that of family stuff at Howard Home in 1598. Oval and spherical tables have been a lot used within the seventeenth century. Falstaff is circumstantially described by Mistress Rapidly as “sitting in my Dolphin chamber, at the round table.” Chair tables with tip-up tops have been made as early as 1558, during which 12 months a “round chair table” within the parlor is bequeathed by Andrew Cranewise of Bury, in his will, printed by the Camden Society. A desk chair-one of the 2 introduced from Canterbury by Archbishop Sancroft on his expulsion from the ocean in 1615-stands in Redenhall Church, Norfolk. Desk tops have been ceaselessly coated with a “carpet” or “cloth” of Turkey work, colored leather-based, or different supplies. The nice oval desk with folding sides within the “Great Rooms or Hall next the Banketing House” had its cowl of pink leather-based bordered with blue gilt leather-based, lower to suit it, as are the desk covers depicted by Abraham Bosse, the place the fabric, which hangs nearly to the bottom, is tied or buttoned on the corners. Copyright © 2012 Mathew Jenkins