Table

As a reminder of the days when a piece of quality furniture could be expected to top a wide-ranging provincial sale, a George II giltwood and gesso occasional table led the way at Dawson’s (20% buyer’s premium) 550-lot event in Maidenhead.

Catalogued as ‘exceptional’, this farmhouse refectory table fulfilled the auctioneer’s adjective in more than one way at Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) sale in Dorchester on April 26.

A 23in (58.5cm) diameter Art Deco table by the designer Edgar Brandt has been consigned to the two-day Design for the Home and Garden auction to be held by Andrew Jones in Los Angeles on May 18-19.

A c.1946 Italian wrought-iron dressing table was among the stand-out sales during the spring Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair in Battersea.

A table designed by a teenaged Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-52) for Windsor Castle sold for £23,500 (plus 21% buyer’s premium) at Gorringe’s of Lewes on December 4.

Capping a vintage year for prime-period Mouseman furniture, a dining suite attracted huge interest when offered for sale in Yorkshire recently.

A unique, high-quality specimen table fitted with Rockingham porcelain plaques is on offer at the next Galloway Fair, which runs from November 23-25 at Wentworth Woodhouse in South Yorkshire.

Fairs can be an ideal place to hunt out that perfect piece of furniture thanks to the high volume and wide variety these events provide. At 'The Bruton Decorative Antiques Fair' there is a particularly strong selection of tables (and much else) this year.

“My granny used to say, if you get stuck sell the French table,” the vendor told Harrogate auctioneer Elizabeth Pepper-Darling.

In the immediate post-war era the work of the French designer-decorator Jean Royère (1902-81) took a turn to embrace a more organic or ‘biomorphic’ style.

Once-fashionable drum tables took a big hit during the furniture slump and while the best can do well, others can be picked up cheaply.

This c.1680 pink painted century Swedish table was among the sales at the recent Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair.

The feast from the east that that has put bread (and some Michelin-starred meals) on the table of dealers and auctioneers for more than a decade continues to do so at sales from Scotland to Surrey.