A small Georgian pedestal table. With a fixed ash top on an oak pedestal base. Good colour and surface

Welsh circa1800

19” diameter x 24” high / 48cm diameter x 61cm high

£850 sold

From The Connoisseur’s Handbook of Antique Collecting – Pedestal Table: a round topped table supported by a central pillar on a tripod base, the legs being of cabriole legs, ending in club or claw-and-ball feet. Pedestal tables were used for general purposes and varied in the degree of carving applied to the base and legs. They were first introduced about 1730 and remained popular throughout the century. 

Pedestal tables were found in the home but also in taverns and coffee houses. The increasing popularity of this type of table at the end of the seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth, no doubt reflects the mounting consumption of tea and other hot beverages such as coffee and chocolate. This table thus played its part in the important bourgeois ritual of tea and chatter, and until recent years a great many were still to be found partnered with Windsor chairs in many of our more old-fashioned provincial tea rooms, the passing of which is much to be regretted.

From Oak Furniture – The British Tradition, by Victor Chinnery. Antique Collectors Club 1979.