Folding Table

Description

An early 17th century oak folding table; the semi-hexagonal top with conforming leaf on double-knuckle hinges; the cables frieze with arches beneath, the frieze incorporating a central drawer; supported on four column-turned legs each surmounted by a turned slit spindle; the leaf supported on a gate with chamfered pivot,turned leg and plain stretcher; the lower shelf supported on moulded and carved rails with turned feet; English, Salisbury, c.1630; shelf and side rails replaced; lower moulding of drawer-front missing. Catalogue description by Victor Chinnery.

'Made in early 17th-century Salisbury workshops; presumed to have gone to the chapel in Corfe Castle; when the castle was sacked in 1644 by the Parliamentary Army it went into the village; in 1868/70 the table came into the possession on Thomas Docwra of Corfe Castle village, whose wife had discovered it in an outhouse in the village, where it stood beside the pump, supplied the sink and was used for draining the plates etc; the people in the cottage said it had 'always stood there' and their family had been in the cottage for the last four generations; it was inherited by the Docwra daughter and then her son, Captain J. Docwra Rogers, who sold it in 1950 via Messrs. Knight, Frank and Rutley. Acquired by Wolsey in February 1951. ex.inf. Captain Rogers. Another table, almost the facsimile minus its lowest extremities and feet now (1955) in the possession of Sir Charles McLeon, was undoubtedly from the same workshop and of some furniture-history value, there not being many pieces of this period that one can line up so well. ex.inf.' S.Wolsey.