Table, designed by A. W. N. Pugin (1812-52). c.1840. Oak top with pine base. Height 29" (74 cm); width 43" (109 cm); depth 22" (56 cm). Image and caption material © copyright The Fine Art Society with Haslam & Whiteway Ltd. Formatting and commentary by Jacqueline Banerjee. [Click on the image for a larger picture.]
There were very many variations on the Pugin table: "More than a hundred types of table were designed for the Palace of Westminster alone" (Gere and Whiteway 46). The simplest one he designed (not this one) was for "poor vicars" (qtd. in Gere and Whiteway 47) and he asked the furniture-maker John Gregory Crace, one of his regular collaborators, to keep it in stock for them — just an example of the keen sense of fitness for purpose that necessitated all these subtle variations.
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Source
Gere, Charlotte, and Michael Whiteway. Nineteenth-Century Design from Pugin to Mackintosh. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993.
Whiteway, Michael. A. W. N. Pugin 1812-1852: An Exhibition Catalogue. London: The Fine Art Society with Haslam & Whiteway Ltd., 7-23 December 2011.
Last modified 28 May 2014