|
Tea Table
Designed by Edward William Godwin (1833-86)
Mahogany.
27 1/2 in. (69.9cm.) x 33 1/2 in. (84.9cm.) x 29.3/4 in. (75.4cm.)
English, circa 1877
LITERATURE:
Susan Webber Soros, The Secular Furniture of E. W. Godwin, New Haven and London, 1999, no. 228. Godwin's design for this table survives in the drawings collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects Catalogue of RIBA Drawings Collection, G-K, P. 44 [147].
It is inscribed 'Tea Table for Paris' and signed and dated 'EWG 'Sep 77'.
An ebonised table of identical form is recorded with the maker's label of William Watt, of Grafton Street, London. Watt, along with Collinson & Lock, were the manufacturers most closely associated with Godwin.
It is possible that the table 'for Paris' was designed with Watt's stand at the Paris Exposition Universelle (1878) in mind.
It is quite in character that Godwin, the designer hailed by Nikolaus Pevsner as a 'pioneer of the modern movement' should have been responsible for this elegant 'spider-leg' tea table, based directly on mid-eighteenth century examples.
Godwin was an admirer of Georgian furniture, some of which he owned, and his sketch books include, for example, a drawing of a 'Sheraton' armchair belonging to Lord Bute.
In the present table, which can be attributed to the workshop of William Watt, one can see what Herman Muthesius described as the 'lightness and elegance' which foreshadowed 'the idea of the modern interpretation that was to follow' (Das Englische Haus, 1904, English edition, 1979, p. 175).
|
