Sutherland table
These slim, practical folding tables were reputedly named after Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, Mistress of the Robes to Queen Victoria during the early decades of her long reign. The combination of a cheval-type construction and gate-leg is far more successful and elegant than it sounds and they are among the few really successful designs of the Victorian period.
The top of a Sutherland is so narrow that it is able to stand against a wall without taking up much space, yet when the flaps are up and supported on two swinging gate legs, it is large enough for a small supper or breakfast table. The frame is almost like a heavy Victorian clothes horse in construction: one or two slim baluster-turned uprights join a simple frieze below the table top. On the best, the gate legs tuck in beside the bracket foot. Others have half-gates with two legs swinging closed in the centre on either side of the central stretcher.
Sutherland tables were such strong little work horses that many of them have only survived in a dilapidated state and some of the more decorative, with slim bands of contrasting veneer, have been broken up to make the tops of questionable pairs of card tables.
Signs of authenticity
1. Undersides of flaps with scoremarks, pronounced where top of gate leg has been swung out and back.
2. Good patination on undersides of end overhang where it has been frequently lifted and moved.
3. Dark, glossy woods with very little decoration.
4. Cheval construction stoutly made with well-turned, simple decoration.
5. Splay of legs compact, not sprawling.
6. Solidly made underframe of mahogany or oak, to withstand hard use.
7. Flaps falling to correct height, just above curve of bracket, to show an inch or two of leg.
8. Good patination under flaps where they have been continuously handled.
Likely restoration and repair
9. Edge of flap split with weight of flaps and constant use. The repair likely to split again with the weight of the flaps after some use.
10. Repairs to join on edge of rule hinge.
11. New turned uprights, replaced uprights from parts of other table legs, even staircase balusters, stained and polished with mottled results, not caused by age or wear.
12. Made up from solid
Victorian mahogany clothes horse, built on similar lines, with new top and underframe.
Construction and materials
Sutherlands are usually about 3 ft bin long — a comfortable size to be lifted by one person. They were made in plain mahogany with mahogany cheval supports, feet and gate legs, with flattened bracket feet joined by a turned stretcher.
They were extremely narrow, not more than 9 in across when the flaps were down, which were very deep and fall to a line just above the stretcher. The two gates on either side are recessed into the underframe, and swing out on wooden hinges.
The flaps have brass hinges on a rule joint, set close to the ends of the joins, with one or two additional hinges under the flap to support the weight when lifting and lowering.
Detail
The upright supports are usually turned or baluster shaped, or twin turned legs socketing in to a single bracket foot at either end. Sometimes, on more ornate versions, there is a small drop finial on the undercurve. Sutherlands are always on castors, sometimes set beneath slightly outward-scrolling feet, or a compressed inward scroll. They are usually about 2 ft 4 in —more the height of dining furniture than writing furniture, and early versions were always in solid woods and not veneered. Later versions for provincial drawing rooms and parlours were veneered in the ubiquitous birds’ eye maple and were much more showy and not so elegant.
Variations
Often the tables are found in oak, and very pleasing when well-polished and aged. However, oak tends to split quite easily, and the weight of the flaps imposes a considerable strain to flap edges and table-top edges at the hinges. Others may be found in yew wood with elm tops, and in fruitwood with oak tops.
Broader versions of this simple design melt into narrow gate-legged tables with deep flaps, made over a century earlier in standard `country’ woods and combinations of woods. Usually the cheval supports are abandoned in favour of four simple straight legs, joined with stretchers. The flaps may be rectangular or rounded.
Reproductions
Small spindly Victorian and Edwardian `tea tables’ are low enough to be used by people sitting in sprung armchairs or sofas. These were sometimes round-leafed, sometimes square or rectangular, but the principles of construction are basically the same: narrow top, often on four turned legs with thin stretchers, and two gate legs to support the flaps.
Heavier, chunkier tables of full height, also on four stretchered legs, usually have flaps of less depth. They are almost a cross between the delicate Pembroke and the functional, unobtrusive Sutherland.
Price bands
Ornate frames, veneered tops,$300-500.
Nineteenth century, plain, solid wood, £200-260.
`Spider leg’, £500-750.
Below: the black paint and excessive turning is characteristic of a late Victorian Sutherland.
Below: in contrast to the table on the left, this elegantly turned and inlaid piece dates from c.1870.