English, unknown maker, early nineteenth century, rosewood veneer, brass and baize. One of a pair with XF217. The tops with rounded front corners and rosewood cross-banding to top edges; each table opens to form a card table with rosewood cross-banding to edges, covered with baize; frieze with sunk panels outlined with brass mouldings; between them a panel of brass washboard pattern above each leg; turned tapering legs with at the top a collar surmounting a ‘tassel’ formed by a section of reeding

This pair of card tables is shown against the south (right-hand) wall of the South Drawing Room in the watercolour view of the 1825 view by J. M. Gandy (Vol. 82, 29). The design of the frieze may have been intended, with its washboard decoration and brass mouldings, to echo the sofa table XF222. Curiously, the washboard decoration appears to have been grained to resemble rosewood although it is in fact brass, as those on the sopha table.

This pair of card tables and the other pair, XF220 and XF221, are almost certainly the two pairs of second-hand tables sold to Soane by John Robins for his drawing rooms at No. 12 on May 5 and June 9 1807 and described as ‘Two mahogany card tables Secd. Hand £4.4s’ (this would be this pair) and ‘Two Mahogany Circular Card Tables Second hand £4.4’, which are presumably XF229 and XF221.¹ The same sort of brass bead mouldings can be found on XF175, a table supplied by Robins.

¹ SM Archive XVI.A.4.