These striking serving tables with their finely-carved motifs in the strictest neoclassical style, idiosyncratic elliptical shape and bold spirally-reeded legs reflect the high quality of furniture produced by London cabinet-making firms under the influence of the most fashionable neoclassical architects like Robert Adam and Charles Cameron.

With their concave elliptical shape, these tables were intended to be placed in an apse and originally had corresponding convex back edges. They were almost certainly commissioned by Jervoise Clark-Jervoise (1733-1808), MP for Great Yarmouth, for his house at 15 Hanover Square. The residence was built between 1770 and 1774 and was designed by the celebrated neoclassical architect Charles Cameron in his only known British commission. Cameron would later move to St Petersburg where he became the favoured architect of Catherine the Great. A design for the ceiling of the dining room of 15 Hanover Square by Charles Cameron is preserved at the John Soane Museum (44/9/15) and shows an apse to one side. Fragments of the executed ceiling are preserved at the V&A Museum (inv. no. 1575-1904 ) and while these show that some changes were made between the design and the executed ceiling, the influence of Robert Adam is clear and the flowerhead and rosette motifs visible on the legs of the serving tables are clearly visible in the semi-circular section of the ceiling that would have corresponded to the apse.

In their carving, design and execution, the tables relate to some of the greatest commissions of English furniture made after Adam designs in the late 18th century. The spirally-reeded legs relate in particular to the pillars of a mahogany tester bed preserved at Croome Court and supplied by the firm France and Bradburn after designs by Robert Adam (NT 170978). Further comparisons may be drawn between the design of the present lot and a set of window seats also supplied by France and Bradburn and carved by Sefferin Alken after a design by Robert Adam for Croome Court (NT 170951.1.1). A giltwood buffet designed by Robert Adam supplied to Robert Child Esq at Osterley Park, Middlesex (NT 771751) also reveals strong similarities in design with the present serving tables. The legs of the buffet bear similar blocks decorated with rosettes, spirally-fluted tapering sections and stiffleaf decoration to the turned baluster sections between the blocks and the lower legs. Executed in 1767 a few years prior to the serving tables, it demonstrates the inestimable influence of Robert Adam on Charles Cameron in particular and more broadly on patrons and architects in late 18th century Britain.

English furniture dating to the late 18th century sold by the Major A. F. Clarke-Jervoise in the 1960s and 70s, including these tables, indicates that the Major’s ancestor Jervoise Clarke-Jervoise was a major patron of the most established London cabinet-making and decorating firms (1733-1808). While the Cameron designs for the Hanover Square house confirm this patronage of art at the highest levels, a side table of a quite different style, sold by Major Clarke-Jervoise in 1965 provides a link with documented furniture from some of the great houses of England. The French-style marquetry side table with a top inlaid after a design by Samuel Dixon and with fascinating gilt-bronze mounts to the angles relates closely to a commode at Nostell Priory, thought to have been supplied but not made by Thomas Chippendale, and also to a closely related commode at Hatfield House. All three pieces of furniture carry a distinctive bronze guilloche mount to the edge of the top and feature marquetry by the same hand. The commode at Nostell was supplied in the early 1770s and the mason contractor employed by Sir Rowland Winn at Nostell Priory, John Devall would go on to work for Jervoise Clarke-Jervoise as 15 Hanover Square was constructed from 1770-1774. It is therefore clear that Clarke-Jervoise was calling upon the services of London’s most respected suppliers and it is likely that the side table as well as the serving tables were supplied by a leading firm like Chippendale, Beckwith and France or Ince and Mayhew, after ‘Adam-esque’ designs drawn up by a young Charles Cameron.