VICTORIAN BURR AND POLLARD OAK KIDNEY-SHAPED KNEEHOLE DESK, IN THE MANNER OF GILLOWS
MID 19TH CENTURY
the top with a red leather insert and pierced brass gallery to the back edge, above an arrangement of nine banded drawers around a kneehole recess, the reverse with three open shelves, on a plinth base
121cm wide, 73cm high, 21cm deep
Provenance: Private colleciton, Berkshire, purchased Butchoff Antiques 
Note: The form of this desk can be traced to a design for 'A Kidney Table,...for reading and writing...: at each end are a number of small drawers' from Thomas Sheraton's The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book, 1793, pl. 58. The form became very popular during the 19th century. 'An Oak Pedestal and Kidney Table' is found in the Gillows' Estimate Sketch Books, dated 1840, the back also fitted with three shelves. A similar example is illustrated, Susan Stuart, Gillows of Lancaster and London 1730-1840, Woodbridge, 2008, vol. I, pp. 338-339, pl. 393.