Gate-leg table
Coinciding more or less with the Commonwealth period, an increasing number of households began to furnish their houses with relatively sophisticated furniture by comparison with the rather basic pieces of earlier periods. One of the most typical was the gate-leg table, made for the houses of yeomen farmers, manor houses and wealthier households whose whole way of life was changing. The old Great Hall had more or less disappeared by this time and the parlour and dining room had become common in most houses of any size.
The gate-leg table developed from the small side table with a semi-circular flap supported on a single gate-leg, and from the writing box on stand with two gate-legs. Free-standing gate-leg tables first made their appearance at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but were not made in any quantity until after 1648. In the main,
gate-legged tables made in England were round or oval, while those made by the Dutch were often square or rectangular.
Legs and stretchers were simple and square until lathe-turning was mastered by English carpenters and joiners between 1640 and 1660, when simple column legs, bobbins, twists and then balusters were all used to make more decorative legs. Gate-legged tables were made in all shapes and sizes, from small ones seating four people to very large 12-seaters, usually with four gate-legs to hold the massive flaps.
Signs of authenticity
1. Underframe of same timber as legs, stretchers and gates.
2. Each flap made of a single piece of timber, with the fixed table top also made in a single piece.
3. Signs of wear on framing stretchers where feet have kicked and worn.
4. Legs and legs of gates with grain running right up to underside of table top, with ,gates’ tenoned into swinging underframe.
5. Timbers of tops, flaps, and underframe of slightly different thicknesses – hand-cut timber was never of even thickness.
6. Good figuring, grain, speckling, of wood, split not sawn.
7. Flaps overhanging gate legs by several inches when raised.
8. Flaps falling to a line just above stretchers when dropped.
9. Good patination, scratch and groove marks where gates have been swung in and out, flaps and gates have been constantly handled.
10. Feet showing signs of fraying from stone floors, damp and wear.
11. Worn, polished sockets to pivots of gate legs from constant use.
12. Flaps hanging flush with closed gates when dropped.
13. No signs of saw marks, or circular saw cuts on underside of any part of timbers.
14. Gates and legs battered, split and chipped in places. Pristine tables are suspicious.
Likely restoration and repair
15. Replaced flap with commercial thickness of timber –genuine period table tops were at least a full inch thick.
16. Cut down from larger sizes –if well done, only the grander turning and decoration on a small supposedly ‘country’ table will provide the clue.
17. If poorly done, joins, framing and gates will all be out of scale.
18. Old flaps cut down from larger sizes, added to smaller fixed top and frame. Thumb moulding may only be at either end of original top. If new thumb moulding has been cut, there will be no patination in the groove or join.
19. Wood split from hinge to edge and repaired – new hinges and break in grain will show up weakness.
Construction and materials
Like most furniture up to the end of the seventeenth century, gate-leg tables were principally made in oak, or oak with elm tops. At the end of the seventeenth century some fine quality tables were made in solid walnut.
They were built on a rectangular frame construction, with an underframe, four legs with stretchers and two swinging gate-legs on either side of the frame. Until c.1700 the tops were pegged to the underframe with wooden dowels; glue was often used and the pieces were clamped together until they were solid and secure. The gate legs were rudimentary, and swivelled on pivots fixed into the underframe and bottom stretchers.
Until c.1670 the flaps and fixed table top had tongue and groove joins with steel hinges fixed with nails. After c.1690 finer tables had rule joins with thumb moulding which carried round the edge of the
table top as well as on the flaps. Hinges were sometimes brass, sometimes steel, and fixed with hand-cut screws.
Gate-leg tables were made in many different sizes, and the larger ones often had an arched or simple decorative frieze at either end, or a small single drawer, supported on a single bearer, usually without side bottom runners.
Detail
Legs were squared or simple turned columns until c. 1690, after which decoration was more elaborate with twist-turned, reel and bobbin and baluster-turned legs, but always the joints were made on square-sectioned blocks between decorative turning. Tables with decoratively-turned legs usually had bun or ball feet, unturned square-sectioned legs or simple columns usually terminated in solid block feet.
Variations
The only difference between
`country’ and grander versions is the quality and craftsmanship in early versions, until the drop-leaf table with wooden hinges developed in mahogany in the eighteenth century and the gate-legged table became more of a country piece.
Country tables continued the simpler, more rudimentary methods of construction long after grander ones had improved with, for example, rule joints, thumb moulding, turned legs and
stretchers. Country versions were more frequently in oak and elm rather than oak only, although this cannot be taken as a rule. Column-turned legs with block feet were more common than ball or bun feet on country versions. Unturned stretchers and less elaborate turning to the legs continued to be the rule for country gate-leg tables. Country versions were often smaller to fit the room sizes in a farmer’s house compared with larger provincial houses
Left: typical style, c.1670, except for small bun feet which were added at a later date.
Reproductions
Eighteenth century
Two eighteenth-century reproductions are: the plain country drop-leaf or modified gate-leg table of more simple form with hinged bearers to support the flaps, and the early Georgian drop-ieaf mahogany gate-leg with curved cabriolestyle legs or plain legs, tapering to a neat pad foot. Gate-legged tables continued to be made with modifications in construction right through to the beginning of the twentieth century, when their cumbersome design and awkward leg arrangements made them unpopular.
Nineteenth century
Victorian ‘rustic’ versions have over-elaborate turning to legs and gates, machine-cut and uniformly regular. They were also made in solid Virginia walnut, a wood that darkens with age and will not take a high polish but remains shallow and dead-looking.
Twentieth century Straight-legged ‘country’ gate-legs entirely in elm are almost certainly of recent manufacture. Copies are made in French walnut, more highly figured than English walnut. French walnut was only used as a veneer in England until c.1720 and not as a solid wood. Mass-produced coarse-grained oak flap or drop-leaf tables were made from the early nineteenth century until the 1930s.
Price bands
Fine, twist-turned oak, c.1670, £4,000-6,000.
Simple turning in oak, or oak and elm, c.1670, $1,200-2,500.
Elaborate bobbin-turned and Continental, c.1700, $1,800-3,000.
Nineteenth-century machine-turned, £400-800.
(Prices are for 6-seater tables with rounded flaps.)