Jane Brenkley Kauri Wine Table with Native Flower Carvings

• Turning - Any part of a piece of furniture that has been turned and shaped with chisels on a lathe. Turned sections include legs, columns, feet, finials, pedestals, stretchers, spindles etc. There have been many varieties and fashions over the centuries: baluster, melon, barley-sugar, bobbin, cotton-reel, rope-twist, and so on. Split turning implies a turned section that has been cut in half lengthwise and applied to a cabinet front as a false decorative support.
• Acanthus - A stylized leaf motif, one of the primary decorative elements of classical Greek and Roman architecture, derived from the genus of flowering plants in the family Acanthaceae, native to tropical and subtropical regions of the Mediterranean area. It is a common element in classical Greek and Roman design, and is often seen in Corinthian and Composite order columns and used as a decorative element in English, European and Australian furniture, particularly on the curve of a leg, and as decoration for a corbel.
• Bobbin Turning - This turning resembles a series of compressed spheres, not unlike a row of beads or bobbins. Commonly associated with Jacobean-style furniture, bobbin turning is also found on a wide variety of small cedar and pine tables and washstands made in Australia during the late 19th century and up to the first world war.
• Kauri - An evergreen conifer tree associated with New Zealand, but also grown in northern Australia, and islands around the Pacific rim including Borneo, Vanuatu and New Guinea. The timber is generally golden in colour, and straight grained without much knotting.
  
  A by-product of the kauri tree was the kauri gum, the fossilised resin extracted from the tree. The gum was obtained through digging, fossicking in treetops, or more drastically, by bleeding live trees. Kauri gum was used in the manufacture of varnishes and other resin-based products, and also crafted into jewellery, keepsakes, and small decorative items.
  
  Kauri forests were prolific in the north of the North Island of New Zealand. European settlers in the 1700 and 1800s realised that the timber from these tall trees with broad trunks would be ideal for ship building and construction and a thriving industry was established harvesting the kauri tree. The forests were substantially reduced, and now the remaining Kauri trees that grow in New Zealand are protected, and there are reserves in various areas of the North Island.
  
  The remaining stands of kauri in New Zealand are under threat from "kauri disease", a microscopic organism that causes dieback in the trees, with vast tracts either dead or dying.
• Signed or Stamped - A signed piece of furniture may mean that the maker has signed (and hopefully dated) the piece in the same way that we sign a cheque, but more likely, that it bears evidence of the name of the maker, wholesaler or retailer as a paper label, metal plaque, impressed into the timber or in later pieces after about 1880, stamped onto the timber with an ink stamp.
  
  The 'signature' or stamp will always be in an unobtrusive position: under the top of a table, on the underside of the rails of a chair, inside a drawer or on the back.
  
  The fact that a piece is 'signed' considerably enhances its value. Signed Australian furniture is extremely rare, and for imported furniture, it is a mark of quality of the item, as only the items by the top makers or retailers were 'signed'

This item has been included into following indexes:

• New Zealand, furniture - tables 63
• tables, material - timber specimen and exhibition top 76
• tables, purpose or type - wine 516