A late Regency mahogany serving table attributed to Gillows

The breakfront rectangular top is raised upon four front and two back scroll legs carved with acanthus leaves and raised on hairy-paw feet. The panelled frieze encloses a disguised mahogany-lined central drawer and is decorated with brass stringing and a central foliate mount flanked by an athemion above each leg. English, circa 1820.

Robert Gillow came to Lancaster as a cabinetmaker around 1730 after a stint at sea in the West Indies. He developed first a national and then an international reputation as a supplier of quality furniture. He is credited with being the first person to import and work with mahogany, having his own fleet bringing timber and rum from the colonies. His three sons joined the firm in the 1750s and had opened a branch in Oxford Street, London, by 1764. The company enjoyed its unique position as a provincial firm with showrooms in the capital for nearly two centuries. Alongside traditional furniture production, Gillows established a reputation for the outfitting of luxury yachts and liners, including the Royal Yacht Victoria and Albert and liners Lusitania, Heliopolis and Cairo, RMS Queen Mary (1934) and Queen Elizabeth (1946) for Cunard. To this day “Gillows” is a byword for high-quality cabinet making. There are two pencil drawings for this style of table in the Gillow’s ‘Estimate Sketch-book’, now in the Westminster City Archive.