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Library table

Ref: 1794
  • Designer / Maker

    Designed and manufactured by George Bullock (died 1818)

  • Detail

    Oak and ebony, with leather top (of later date)
    79 x 201 x 94 cm
    English (London), circa 1815

  • Provenance

    […]; Sir James Stirling (1926-92), probably acquired early 1980s, and by descent

  • Collection

    Private collection

  • Notes

    A design for the ends of a library table of this form, but with inlaid decoration in the door panels and frieze, is recorded in the Wilkinson Tracings (City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham: M.3.74, p. 98).

    In 1816, Bullock invoiced the British Government for Napoleon’s use on St Helena: ‘A Mahogany Library Table inlaid with Ebony with Cupboards at each end for portfolio’s [sic] and drawers’, at a cost of £69. 5s. (see Martin Levy, ‘Napoleon in Exile.  The Houses and Furniture supplied by the British Government for the Emperor and his Entourage on St Helena’, Furniture History, XXXIV (1998), p. 110.  The plan of the ‘Library’, from the Lowe Papers (British Library, Add. MS. 20,222, f. 220) is reproduced in Levy, fig. 8.  When an inventory was taken following Napoleon’s death in 1821, ‘1 large Mahogany Library Table’ was recorded in his ‘sitting room’ (see Levy, p.152).  Sir Hudson Lowe, Governor of St Helena may have claimed this table when he returned to the United Kingdom, but its present location is unknown (see Levy, pp. 63-68).

    The Times, 25 October 1815, reported: ‘The library table is particularly elegant and mechanical ingenuity has been laboriously applied to furnish it with desks and drawers, suited to every convenience of study and accommodation.’  It may be that the ‘desks’ mentioned by The Times are the lifting compartments at either end.  This description fits the present table, and doubtless suited the ‘convenience’ of the architect James Stirling.

    Four other tables of this form are known, three in mahogany and one in oak.  The first to appear on the market, from the collection of the Earls of Granville, was a mahogany version with Paul Coutts in 1983; the second, in mahogany, was with Carlton Hobbs in 1984; the third, in oak, was with Blairman in 1988 (sold later from the collection of Edouard Sarofim, Christie’s (London) 16 November 1995, lot 117, and a mahogany example was offered by Christie’s (London), 7 July 1994, lot 155.

    In 1999 the Stirling family’s table was recorded in situ by Philip Smithies, in a drawing redolent of Thomas Hope (see right).