Copyright (c) 2012 Mathew Jenkins
Dining tables were massive and thick set, the baluster or bulbous legs being held by solid stretchers which served as foot rests. The frieze is often carved, or more rarely, as in the draw-top table in the Victoria and Albert Museum, inlaid; while sometimes the frieze is carved on the front only, the sides being left plain. In late sixteenth-century stretchers there is a projection on the top surface making it T-shaped in section, a type which gives place to a rectangular section in the early seventeenth century. The table leg shows the fullest development of the bulbous support. Developing from the knop, the large bulbous form was established in the late years of the sixteenth century and existed for almost a century, for an oak table in the possession of Mr. Frank Green, dated 1668, has this bulbous gadrooned leg. An unusual variant is the dropped bulb.
The columnar leg appears in the last decade of the sixteenth century, and is especially characteristic of the early seventeenth century. In some examples, as in the oak table in St Michael's Church, St Albans, the leg has a quasi-classical capital. Baluster legs, turned and ringed, replaced the bulbous leg in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. An elongated peg-top support, usually left plain and decorated with rings, was borrowed from Holland in the late seventeenth century.
Small tables for use in parlors varied in the shape of the top, which was oval, round, or octagonal. Closely similar are the octagonal table, dated 1606, in the possession of the Carpenters' Company, and Elias Ashmole's table at Oxford. In both the slender bulbous legs are fluted, and the arcading is notched; while in the Carpenters' Company's table there is a moulded surrounding and plain cross stretcher. Folding or flap tables, in which the flap is supported by a swinging leg, were light in make, and often set against the wall until required. Such tables appear in the manuscript inventory taken in 1569 of goods at Tannis, in Hertfordshire, and in that of household stuff at Howard House in 1598­.
Oval and round tables were much used in the seventeenth century. Falstaff is circumstantially described by Mistress Quickly as "sitting in my Dolphin chamber, at the round table." Chair tables with tip-up tops were made as early as 1558, in which year a "round chair table" in the parlor is bequeathed by Andrew Cranewise of Bury, in his will, printed by the Camden Society.
A table chair-one of the two brought from Canterbury by Archbishop Sancroft on his expulsion from the sea in 1615-stands in Redenhall Church, Norfolk.
Table tops were frequently covered with a "carpet" or "cloth" of Turkey work, coloured leather, or other materials. The great oval table with folding sides in the "Great Rooms or Hall next the Banketing House" had its cover of red leather bordered with blue gilt leather, cut to fit it, as are the table covers depicted by Abraham Bosse, where the cloth, which hangs almost to the ground, is tied or buttoned at the corners.
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