Tudor oak serving table

Tudor oak serving table with massive chamfered legs. This object is a rare survival of a pre-1550 domestic table of relatively modest proportions. It height and narrow top indicate that it was not originally intended to be sat at for the purpose of dining. It was likely designed to be placed adjacent to a longer, lower, and wider table for use a surface for the display and service of food. While construction of tables with chamfered legs persists well into the seventeenth century, the impressive mass of this example and its labor intensive construction indicate an early sixteenth-century date.

Recovered from a manor house in Rutland.

Top a sixteenth-century replacement; minor period repairs to joints of stretchers.

Dry surface.

· A similar table with closely related massive chamfered legs is partially illustrated as Chinnery, Oak Furniture, The British Tradition, p.183, fig. 2:199.