A George II Mahogany Concertina-Action Card Table, Circa 1755

With Jeremy Ltd., London;

Supplied by Parish-Hadley, New York, to Ann and Gordon Getty in 1976;

The Collection of Ann and Gordon Getty, Christie's New York, 23 October 2022, lot 580.

While the most common animal-form foot in the history of English furniture is most likely the paw foot, this table features a more playful and imaginative foot in the form of a dolphin. A ‘dolphin’ in the decorative arts is often a semi-imagined or stylised sea creature, and they recur at various points of the history of ancient and modern ornament. In England, they often occur in the works of William Kent, whose clear penchant for fish scales and scallop shells tipped into the inclusion of dolphins on, for instance, the armrests of the state chair in the Board Room of the Treasury Building,¹ and, naturally, for the Royal Barge.² As feet, dolphins can be seen on the chair created for the Director of the East India Company, made in circa 1730,³ and notably on one of the ‘French Chairs’ of Chippendale’s 1762 Director.⁴ A well-documented suite of mid-eighteenth-century furniture with dolphin feet is dispersed across various collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum (W.39-1946) and the Lady Lever Art Gallery.⁵ There is also a stool in the Victoria and Albert Museum with similar dolphin feet (W.39-1946).

¹ Frank Salmon, ‘Public Commissions’, p. 324, in William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain, ed. Susan Weber, New Haven, 2014, p.324, fig.13.12.

² Geoffrey Beard and John Hardy, ‘The Royal Barge’, in William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain, ed. Susan Weber, New Haven, 2014, p.309, fig. 12.9.

³ Malini Roy, ‘East India Company headquarters on Leadenhall Street’, British Library Blog, 2017. Available at: <https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2017/01/east-india-company-headquarters-on-leadenhall-street.html> [accessed 19th April 2024]

⁴ Thomas Chippendale, The Gentleman & Cabinet-Maker’s Director, New York, 1966 reprint, pl. XXI.

⁵ Lucy Wood, The Upholstered Furniture in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, New Haven, 2008, no. 49, pp. 532-54.