The Mahogany Table

In the list my mother made of all her possessions in the last flat she had in Hastings before she went in to Old Hastings House, she described this as a 'mahogany occasional table' and that it was valued by Sotheby's some time in the 1980s at £80. She writes that she acquired it from her cousin, Helen Liddell, known to us as 'Cousin Bay', when the old lady died. Sadly, she doesn't say where Bay got it from so I can only speculate.

Bay was on the staff of the Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) where she was their expert on German affairs so I don't think she travelled to the far east, where this table is most likely to have been made.

It's intricately carved and would be a fine piece except for the crude way in which four large screws are inserted into the table top to hold on the legs.

There's a possibility that it wasn't originally Bay's. This is supported by evidence from another list my mother made where she wrote, "1 side table ex Uncle Stanley". Perhaps Bay inherited it from Sir Stanley Reed when he died.

It's exactly the sort of item that my great uncle Stanley, who was owner and editor of the Times of India, would have had. He had married Lillian Humphreys, my mother's mother's sister, and my mother inherited both money and furniture from him.

I'm not at all sure what the things are at the bottom of the legs. They might be dragon's heads or they could be the ends of an elephant's trunk with eyes added.

None of this really matters. The table doesn't need a history. I like it for what it is.