Louis XV Style Carved Cabriole Leg Side Table, Painted, c. 1940–1980

The Table

A square side table in the Louis XV manner, with a full width drawer, a carved foliate front and four slender cabriole legs, finished in a dry brushed white over a pink ground.

The drawer is the piece of design that carries the table. Its front is shaped rather than flat, dropping into a long scalloped lower edge that reads as an apron when the drawer is closed, and across it runs a band of foliate carving in low relief. Two opposed acanthus leaves meet at a double C scroll in the middle, and from each a slender stem of leaves and flowers trails out to the corners. It opens the full width of the case.

The legs are long, thin cabrioles with a raised bead running down the outer face and a gentle flare at the foot. There is no stretcher. The whole base is carried on the four legs alone, which is what gives the table its lightness and is also why the proportions have to be right. They are.

The top is square with a molded edge and an inner border band, and inside that it carries a diamond trellis pattern. The paint has settled into the joint lines and picks them out as fine grooves.

History & Provenance

The table is unmarked and is offered as a twentieth century piece in the Louis XV taste rather than as a period one.

The form is the French occasional table of the middle eighteenth century, with the shaped drawer front, the serpentine lower edge and the stretcherless cabriole base all drawn from that vocabulary. It is a style that has been made continuously ever since, in France and elsewhere, and the quality of a given example comes down to how well the curves are handled. Here they are handled well. The cabriole has a real double curve rather than a bow, the bead follows the leg cleanly around its changes of direction, and the carved band is cut with enough depth that the leaves throw a shadow.

The dating given is an estimate from style, quality and construction, not from a mark or a date code, and it is stated as an estimate. The carcass is consistent with twentieth century production in the French manner, and nothing visible argues for an eighteenth or nineteenth century date. A buyer wanting a firm attribution should examine the drawer interior, where the dovetailing would settle both the period and the place of manufacture.

The painted surface is a later decorative treatment and reads clearly as one. A soft pink was laid down first, then a white was dragged over it with a nearly dry brush so that it skips and leaves the pink showing through in a fine crosshatch. The effect is deliberate, it is evenly carried across every surface including the inside edges of the legs, and it is the current finish rather than an old one. There is fine crazing in the white film in places.

The diamond trellis on the top sits under that paint. It may be laid parquetry or it may be scribed decoration, and the paint makes it impossible to say which without stripping a corner, so it is described here as the pattern it presents and nothing more.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

This is a table that does not need a wall. With no stretcher and four long legs it reads light from every side, so it can float beside a chair, stand behind a sofa, or sit in the middle of a small room without closing it off.

The finish is the reason it will go where a brown table will not. Pink under white is a quiet, warm, slightly faded register that sits against linen, pale plaster, old gilt and almost any upholstery, and it keeps the carving legible because the white catches the raised work and the pink stays down in the ground.

The drawer is a real one and runs the full width, which on a table this size means it actually holds things rather than gesturing at storage.

For a dealer or a designer, the appeal is the shape. Cabriole legs this slender are the part of the style that cheap versions get wrong, and these are right. Set beside a plain modern sofa it does the job a good antique does, which is to stop a room reading as a showroom.