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Lot Essay
The sideboard-table, with Venus-shell badges festooned with Roman acanthus-husks and serpentined legs terminating in Jupiter's eagle-claw feet, relates to antique 'table frame' patterns issued in Batty and Thomas Langley's The City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs, 1739. Another table of this pattern, its shell displaying distinctive part-fluted scallops, was sold anonymously at Christie's, London, 6 April 2000, lot 50 (£89,500). The latters' shell features on a claw-footed card-table bearing the cabinet-maker's label of Benjamin Crook, who was established in St. Paul's Church Yard in 1732. It also appears on claw-footed chairs bearing the label of Giles Grendey (d. 1780) of Clerkenwell and on a pair of open armchairs, originally from Coleshill House, Berkshire, sold by the Executors of the late Miss M. E. Pleydell-Bouverie, Christie's, London, 25 November 1965, lot 37 (C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840, Leeds, 1996, figs. 265 and 435).
Casewick was purchased by the Trollope family in 1621. First recorded in the Domesday book, the house at Casewick was extensively remodelled with the addition of a new Jacobean façade in the 1620's, and its exterior remained largely unchanged until the addition of a new 'Gothick' front for Sir William Trollope in 1786-1788, designed by the Stamford architect William Legg. Improvements continued throughout the 18th Century during the tenure of Sir Thomas Trollope-Bellew, 3rd Baronet, who lived at Casewick between 1729 and 1784, and these included formal gardens and a new coachhouse, which was built in 1740 at a cost of £40. It was almost certainly at this time that the side table was introduced - as well as the superb William Vile collector's cabinet-on-stand which is visible in the 1964 Country Life article.
Casewick was purchased by the Trollope family in 1621. First recorded in the Domesday book, the house at Casewick was extensively remodelled with the addition of a new Jacobean façade in the 1620's, and its exterior remained largely unchanged until the addition of a new 'Gothick' front for Sir William Trollope in 1786-1788, designed by the Stamford architect William Legg. Improvements continued throughout the 18th Century during the tenure of Sir Thomas Trollope-Bellew, 3rd Baronet, who lived at Casewick between 1729 and 1784, and these included formal gardens and a new coachhouse, which was built in 1740 at a cost of £40. It was almost certainly at this time that the side table was introduced - as well as the superb William Vile collector's cabinet-on-stand which is visible in the 1964 Country Life article.