THE SHROTON TABLE
THE SHROTON TABLE
£850 (+ vat)
A beautiful, functional & versatile side table.
Built by hand, using traditional techniques from antique timbers.
Each retaining centuries of patina and age.
The Shroton Table is designed around & upon the beauty of the timbers; the choice of the cut taken by the original cabinetmakers in the 18th century and the built up layers of patina to date. We begin the process with the surface blemishes and build upon them.
Overlooked, unloved or damaged Georgian tables are given new life, avoiding the impact seen in the creation of much modern furniture.
Wastage is kept to an absolute minimum, with the bases & tops being extracted as efficiently as possible from each slab of timber.
530mm high X 305mm diameter
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James Macfadyen, writing in 1837, praised ‘Old Jamaican Mahogany’ as superior to that produced by any other country, adding:
- “The exquisite beauty of the finer kinds of mahogany, the incomparable lustre of which it is susceptible, exempt also from the depredations of worms, hard, durable, warping and shrinking very little, it is pre-eminently calculated to suit the work of the cabinet-maker. Accordingly, these admirable properties, added to its abundance, and the largeness of its dimensions, have occasioned it to be manufactured into every description of furniture.”
Swietenia mahagoni, indigenous to the Antilles in the West Indies, known in the eighteenth-century as Cuban, Jamaican and Santo Domingo mahogany[2] (Jamaica providing the most prized timber). The second species is the closely related Swietenia macrophylla, known variously as Honduran mahogany and Bay Wood (from the Bays of Campeche and Honduras, whence it was exported).
It is often assumed that mahogany was an integral part of the ‘triangular trade’, in which ships went first to West Africa to buy slaves, then to the West Indies to sell the slaves, a finally home with a cargo of West Indian produce. Melinda Elder has shown how a number of Lancaster vessels took part in the triangular trade, carrying West Indian produce, including mahogany, for their return ladings.18 But she has also shown that the majority of Lancaster’s West India merchants were not slave traders and that the number of slavers declined both relatively and absolutely in the second half of the eighteenth century. Although Gillows were connected personally and financially with a number of slavers, including Charles Inman and Benjamin Satterthwaite, there is no evidence that Gillows were themselves directly involved. But we need not necessarily infer that the firm had any moral objection to the trade. Rather, the longer voyages, unreliable sailings and the greater financial risk of the triangular trade made this an unattractive option for prudent men such as Robert Gillow.
