A Flemish walnut draw-leaf table, mid-17th century and later

The collection of Paul Hirsch (1881–1951), Frankfurt, where photographed in the early to mid-1930s, then after 1936 in Cambridge;

Thence by inheritance to his wife Olga Hirsch (1889–1969);

To their son Robert Hirsch (1920–1984), as stated on a metal plaque to the underside of the table;

Thence by descent to his son Desmond Hirsch (1950–).

While this form of table is characteristic of seventeenth-century Flanders, it is unusually decorative in its use of parquetry to the top. While it is difficult to be certain, since they are not all photographed aerially, the tables in the classic studies of Flemish furniture (such as J. van Herck's Il Mobile Fiammingo, MIlan, 1972 and V. Champier's Le Mobilier Flamand, Paris, 1926) and those on the market tend to have a mitred border enclosing a plain surface of simple planks.

This table has been passed down through several generations of the Hirsch family, and accompanied Paul and Olga Hirsch when they left Germany in 1936. A photograph of the piece in the family's Frankfurt residence in the 1930s prior to their departure is available on request; for more information on the Hirsch family, see the catalogue note to lot 94.