Fine Regency Burr Oak Tilt Top Table #2734

A wonderful Regency burr oak tilt top dining / centre table of excellent natural colour and wax patina.

English Circa 1825

Constructed during the reign of George IV and inspired by Greco Roman design this superb table has extremely well chosen cuts of burr oak, which is rare to find in this size.

The circular tilt-top veneered with burr oak to centre, enclosed by an ebony inlay and crossbanded edge over a plain frieze with beaded edge, above a flared hexagonal-section stem with lobed collar and tricorn platform having gadrooned edge terminating on finely scrolling winged lion’s paw feet and recessed brass castors.

In wonderful condition having the most amazing natural warm colour which is been obtained by years of wax polish. There has been historical movement to one of the joints which is now secure and extremely hard to see owing to the wonderful burr of the oak.

Of extremely elegant proportions a Regency table of this quality in burr oak is exceedingly hard to find.

Provenance: In the private collection at Hyde Hall, Hertfordshire

Adam Bowett explains in his excellent and informative book on timber ‘Woods in British Furniture-Making 1400-1900: An Illustrated Historical Dictionary’ how brown oak is oak which has been infested by the ‘beef-steak’ fungus (Fistula hepatica). The fungus ‘turns the oak a rich brown colour, more or less variegated and sometimes streaked almost with black’, but this ‘has little effect on the wood’s structural properties and is usually killed by seasoning’.

‘Brown oak became sought after in the late Georgian and Regency periods as part of the wider fashion for native timbers engendered by the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Burr oak, brown oak and bog oak all occur on Regency furniture, usually in small sections as a crossband or panel, but also as a primary veneer for tables and other large furniture. The overtly nationalistic symbolism of this native timber chimed harmoniously with a nascent historicism emerging in British arts and design which favoured, among other things, dark English oak over the paler imported varieties from Europe and America. 

Literature : Adam Bowett, ‘Woods in British Furniture-Making 1400-1900: An Illustrated Historical Dictionary’ pp.171-2