"You never actually own a drop leaf table, you merely look after it for the next generation" - to paraphrase a well-known watch makers copy. But I tell you what, it's jolly well true.
Now I'm not claiming to know all the details of this table's provenance, (naturally it's been privvy to a select number of dining experiences at my house between the hours of 7pm and 9pm for quite some successive days in a row), but prior to that? Well, let's just say, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Anne of Cleves had a bowl of kedgeree at it. It certainly wouldn't raise an eyebrow to intimate that Pablo Picasso sketched a few of his notable portraits at it; and whilst we're at it, I definitely wouldn't be at all taken aback to hear that Mark Twain had written some delightful and exhilarating prose at it.
I should point out that I can't actually prove any of this, merely that I'd just just flare a nostril, tilt my head casually to one side, twitch my fingers out and whilst raising my shoulders in a slow, slightly lugubrious manner, nonchalantly suggest that I would have expected that to be the case. And that's not because I'm either Poirot OR Magnum PI, or Angela Lansbury for that matter, no, it's because this table has a patina about it that's luxuriously decadent.
Oval in shape, legs that just sing as they swing out underneath, solid throughout with the tell-tale marks of the millennia scuffed into the surface. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what a table is all about.
Magna Carta? Signed here. Shakespeares first folio? Scribed here. Lord of the Rings? First draft scratched into the varnish. Sacred incantations to deliver eternal life, wealth, and joy? Decoded through the rings in the wood! Seriously, this table delivers - and then some. PM me to collect! R
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