Featured Small table with lockable drawer

You could get it restored: not cheap but it's a nice wee thing.

 

Hopefully one day I'll manage it! Am selling everything etc etc trying to get enough cash to get my car back...she's a 1991 GTd Golf and very lovely but needs so much work

 

Yes, the feet are Queen Anne in America, George I in England where they named furniture styles after kings, Americans obviously didn't do that.
The time periods are slightly different as well, QA here was 1730-1760 and was replaced by Chippendale 1770-1800.
So the same styles, slightly different dates but totally different names!

 

...I was so so confused about Queen Anne...our Queen Anne is just before George i,and I get dates mixed up!!

QA reigned here 1702 to 1714, George i 1714 -1727 so I was very befuzzled.
I didn't realise that they were two different things ( QA here and QA THERE!). Though I should have.

The only thing history wise I actually have any type of a grip on is English monarchs. Love them passionately. Still it's not what I would call a secure grasp.
That's absolutely wonderful info,thank you so much @James Conrad ... this has been so much fun xxx
In fact thanks all x​

 

Yes, it IS confusing, no doubt! George 1,2&3 comprised the entire 18th century in English furniture, Georgian furniture.
Here it's William & Mary, Queen Anne & Chippendale that does the same thing.
We don't have a George in there anywhere!
And with George III, we had some major issues that led to war & independence.

 

In antiqes terms, we are far more specific over here. So, something made in the early 1830s would be called William IV.

 

[QUOTE="Ownedbybear, post: 2056019, member: 29"]In antiqes terms, we are far more specific over here. So, something made in the early 1830s would be called William IV.[/QUOTE]

** MY HAND IS UPPP!!**
I KNOW YOU DIDN'T ASK A Q BUT I KNOW THE ANSWER OF THE Q YOU DIDN'T ASK MRS B!!! **

Mee !! Meeee!
I KNOW THIS ONE!
**Ahem ** cough cough ...

William IV ... reigned ... 1830-1837!!


I know very little, as we know and ... well ... I do know this one.

I am now shuffling back to my dark corner
<3 xx​

 

You get a PRIZE!

 

I started off WITH the prize in this particular game!

 

True!

 

To those who claim that it couldn't be a sewing table, allow my explanation for why I believe so: The shelf below the drawer has a rounded shape in front, not in the back. This is traditionally made so someone could sit in front of it a little closer than if said shelf was straight there as in the back.

Ergo, the table was meant to be sat in front of. The table is small and not used for huge sewing projects. Those were executed in professional seamstress locales back in them days.

This table was meant for a lady who either gently embroidered little pillow or chair covers, handkerchiefs, doilies, maybe tatted [made lace] on a cushion used specifically for this purpose and placed on top of the little table. Notions uch as needles, threads, pins, and tatting spools were stored in the drawer, the work itself too if it fit when not being worked on.

 

Well, I don't really know what this stand was used for, my best guess, ladies stand of some sort because of the lock but, doesn't look like a typical sewing stand to me.
I don't think sewing stand because there is no "bag" to hold unfinished sewing projects which most 19th-century sewing stands had.

 

@James Conrad Such a bag would probably be long done by now, James, don't you think?

But the shelf, with the cutout for the legs would be the place where a larger work, or fabric bag to hold it, would be placed. Thank you for thinking of it.

 

It's nowhere near girly enough for a sewing/work table and quite the wrong shape. There is no sign of a fitment for a velvet or tapestry bag, which would indeed be typical of the period for a work table. Plenty of those still exist here. The variant is a wooden "bag" below, also common. Both types were suspended from the base of the table top: they did not sit on a shelf.





And of course, no lift off or fold out top either. Or fitted interior.

Embroideries and tatting were done using frames, of course. You'd not lean on a table to do that.

 

Well, I do believe that you're describing a type of sewing table common in the British Isles. With bags, etc.

The sewing table I have, the Gustavian style previously shown, did not have fittings for a bag.

But inside one of the small compartments in the drawer it has a customfitted pin/needle cushion. I e it was intended to be a sewing table.

As mine is an elegant version in peartree wood (has been identified professionally as such), it was likely intended for a lady whose sewing hobbies did not include a need for a big bag to hang from it.

I did check under it: No hooks or other visible means of hooking a bag there.

In conclusion I'll just maintain that even sewing tables came as in as many shapes and styles as any other furniture, and that the details in them could vary not just in style but in quality also.

Oh, and I learned to tatt lace in my school in Sweden. We placed the tatting cushion on top of the school desk for support, not on our knees.

 

Re Tatting: Ladies with their tatting cushions supported by small tables. Finland, 1980s:
https://wiki.aineetonkulttuuriperinto.fi/uploads/c/cb/Nyplääjät_1980.jpg

 

Here's a very similar sewing table to mine, a little simpler in lines but essentially styled the same. Note the fliptop lid over the compartments with individual lids. A bag is also attached to it to hold yarn or work needing holding.
https://www.antikcarl.dk/antik-sybord-2/

 

Ah. That's not what's called tatting here, that's pillow or cushion lace. Uses bobbins so also called bobbin lace. Not done by middle class or upper class women in the UK.



This is tatting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatting . Uses similar to crochet hooks and a shuttle.

The bags weren't hooked on the Georgian tables, be they fabric or the wooden compartments.

 

All that handwork! So painstaking, so delicate, so mind-boggling.... so under-appreciated nowadays! I see bags of it in all the 2nd hand stores, unloved and unsold.

 

I do agree: I buy it in swathes.