Victorian Mahogany Extension Dining Table with Fluted Baluster Legs
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A Victorian mahogany extension dining table, 19th century, the rectangular top with thumb nail moulded edge and rounded corners, over a plain skirt and raised on four fluted baluster legs with brass caps and castors. With two extension leaves, winder and a set of four cups. Height 73 cm, length 167 cm, width 107 cm, extended length 259 cm
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- Castors - Wheels, fitted especially to chair legs, couches, tables and some smaller pieces of furniture, to enable them to be easily moved about. The earliest castors were of brass, with shanks fitting into the base of the leg, and the wheels often made of leather. In the late 18th century, brass 'bucket' or 'cup' castors were introduced, either rounded or square, fitting directly over the end of the leg and held in place with screws. The wheels were generally solid brass. Bucket/cup castors continued in use throughout the 19th century and indeed are still made today. In the later 19th century wheels were sometimes made of wood, china, either white or brown, and sometimes of steel.
- Baluster (furniture) - An architectural term for a column in a balustrade or staircase, often defined as a "vase shape". The shape is extensively used in furniture and decorative arts.
In furniture, it is used to describe a chair or table leg turned in that form, or more usually as an inverted baluster, with the bulbous section to the top. Less commonly used to describe a chair back that has the outline of a baluster. A baluster may also be split and applied to the front of a cupboard for ornamentation.
For ceramics and silver items it is often used to describe the shape of the whole item, rather than a part.
In Georgian glassware, the shape is commonly seen in the stem of glasses. - Mahogany - Mahogany is a dense, close grained red-coloured timber from the West Indies and Central America. It was first imported into Europe in the the early 18th century and its use continued through the 19th century. It was popular for furniture making because of its strength, the wide boards available, the distinctive grain on some boards, termed flame mahogany and the rich warm colour of the timber when it was polished.. The "flame" was produced where a limb grew out from the trunk of the tree, and this timber was usually sliced into veneers for feature panels on doors, backs and cornices.
Some terms used to describe mahogany relate to the country from which it originally came, such as "Cuban" mahogany, "Honduras" mahogany etc. However unless the wood has been tested the names assigned are more a selling feature, rather than a true indication of the timber's origin. - Skirt - In furniture, the skirt is a strip of wood underneath the top or front of the item. On chairs, the skirt is the support under the seat joining the legs, while on tables, the skirt is the support under the top, that assists in supporting the top and also joins the legs. On carcase furniture such as chests and cabinets, the skirt is the timber strip immediately under the drawers or cupboard.
- Victorian Period - The Victorian period of furniture and decorative arts design covers the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901. There was not one dominant style of furniture in the Victorian period. Designers used and modified many historical styles such as Gothic, Tudor, Elizabethan, English Rococo, Neoclassical and others, although use of some styles, such as English Rococo and Gothic tended to dominate the furniture manufacture of the period.
The Victorian period was preceded by the Regency and William IV periods, and followed by the Edwardian period, named for Edward VII (1841 ? 1910) who was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India for the brief period from 1901 until his death in 1910. - Fluting - A form of decoration found on many pieces of furniture, as well as ceramics, silver and clocks, in which round-bottomed grooves, of varying width and depth, are let into columns, pilasters, legs. As a general rule, flutes are cut in the vertical, though they may follow a turned leg in a spiral pattern. In cross-section, they may be described as a series of 'U' shapes, rising and narrowing at each end of the groove. Fluting is the opposite of reeding, with which fluting is often associated.
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