Object description:
Rectangular side table, carved and gilded with a multi-coloured marble mosaic top. Frieze decorated with stylised flowers, apron of pierced foliate decoration with central female mask. On four baluster legs with gadrooned collar, joined by X-stretcher with central finial. Thomas Pelletier, son of Jean and younger brother of René (d. 1726), was appointed Cabinet Maker in Ordinary to Queen Anne in 1704. In spite of this royal appointment, and Jean Pelletier's royal commissions, very little furniture by any member of the Pelletier family has until now been satisfactorily identified. Recently a number of pieces linked by style and documentary evidence, mostly still in the Royal Collection, have been grouped together, and a picture has begun to emerge of the Pelletiers' work for the Crown in the first decade of the eighteenth century. Thomas Pelletier's apparent anonymity may be due in part to his having worked as a sub-contractor (with his brother René) for the older royal cabinet-maker, Gerrit Jensen. For example, a pair of highly sophisticated gilt stands for Japanese cabinets, which seem certain to have been carved by the Pelletiers, were probably supplied by Jensen to Queen Anne for Kensington Palace in c.1704 ). Several other pieces bearing Queen Anne's monogram are likely to have been supplied in the same manner, including this table. Although it has not been possible to identify a specific order for this table, the fine specimen marble top inlaid with Queen Anne's monogram at the four corners could be related to the 'Marble inlayd Table upon a Carved guilded frame' supplied for Queen Anne at Kensington by the sculptor John Nost in 1704 and valued at £80. The pier table was removed by George IV from Kensington Palace - either from the King's Gallery or from the Queen's Drawing Room - to help furnish the newly created Private Apartments at Windsor Castle in the late 1820s. After the stripping of the original surface (confirmed during recent conservation), complete regessoing and somewhat metallic regilding by Morel & Seddon, it joined a group of early eighteenth-century giltwood taken from Kensington and Hampton Court Palaces as part of the highly eclectic furnishing of the Grand Corridor. Catalogue entry from Royal Treasures, A Golden Jubilee Celebration, London 2002
