An Irish George II style mahogany side table by Hicks of Dublin, 19th century

James Hicks (1866-1939) was a Dublin-based 'Cabinet Manufacturer, Collector and Restorer of Chippendale, Adam and Sheraton furniture'. His particular focus was on the designs of the eighteenth century, which he studied carefully and recreated in timbers of the highest quality. There was a healthy market for his precise renderings of historical styles, including the British and Swedish royal families; he received ultimate professional recognition when one of his tables from 1929 was posthumously chosen to represent Ireland in the 1939 New York World Trade Fair.

A similar Hicks table in the 1730s style can be found in James Peill and the Knight of Glin, Irish Furniture; Woodwork and Carving from the Earliest Times to the Act of Union, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007, p.262, pl.263, on which the floral festoons and the acanthus carving on the apron are an almost exact match for the present lot.