Gower House side table

This table, originally one of a pair, was purpose-designed for Gower House, Whitehall, one of William Chambers’ few domestic commissions. His masterpiece was Somerset House, the original home of the Royal Academy, of which he was also the founding Treasurer.

The robust D-shaped table and its simple ornament of draped vases and a Greek key frieze are typical of Chambers’s ponderous yet inventive architectural designs: sourced in Ancient Rome but transformed for modern needs.

The back legs were added when the table was removed from its original position built into a niche in the Great Drawing Room of Gower house. We know from contemporary photographs that the table was still in place in the years immediately before the house was demolished in 1886. The tabletop is modern, and was made to suggest the original white marble top, now lost.

Gower House side table, circa 1774, William Chambers (1723 – 1796)
Cabinetmaker,Attributed to Sefferin Alken (act.1744-1783)
©The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London.