How common are gateleg tables on Sellingantiques?

Around 61 are listed a year, and 147 different dealers have handled them. That makes it a form almost every general furniture dealer touches sooner or later. The archive runs to 547 titles in total, so there is a steady flow rather than an occasional appearance.

Are these dining tables or occasional tables?

Both, and the split is close. Small appears in 81 titles and large in 78, so the category is as much about compact occasional and coffee tables as about dining furniture. Dining is named in 159 titles. At the top of the size range sit a ten-seater measured at 228cm wide and an Irish wake table at 235cm, the largest figures anyone states.

What is a Sutherland table?

A narrow-topped gateleg occasional table with two flaps, usually dated Victorian or Edwardian. It takes 48 of the titles in this archive. Burr walnut and satinwood-inlaid examples turn up, along with baby and three-quarter sizes.

Which woods turn up most?

Oak, by a wide margin: 322 of 547 titles. Mahogany follows at 108 and walnut at 42, with burr walnut named in a dozen. Elm, ash, pine, yew and fruitwood appear only in ones and twos. Yew is the scarcest of them all.

Were gateleg tables made outside Britain?

Rarely, on the evidence here. Origins are almost entirely English. The rest amounts to a single Swedish slagbord, one Swedish base with a later wash, one French dining table, one Italian painted example, and a scattering of Welsh, Scottish and Irish attributions.

Do unusual variants of the form come up?

Occasionally. Forms that surface once and nowhere else include a corner gateleg, a D-end gateleg, a trifold games table and a box table. An envelope or handkerchief tea table and a chinoiserie lacquer drop-flap table also appear as one-offs. Spider-leg tables are a small but recurring branch, some of them titled Pembroke.

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Antique Gateleg Tables

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A drop-leaf table whose hinged leaves are held up by pivoting gate frames of turned legs and stretchers, so it folds to a narrow slab against a wall and opens to a round or oval dining top.