Antique Rent Tables
A rent table is a round or polygonal pedestal table with drawers set into the frieze all the way round, made so an estate steward could sit at it and take in tenants' rents and papers.
Antique Rent Tables
The form emerged in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century as an estate office table: a pedestal table with drawers or compartments around the whole frieze, sometimes lettered or numbered, so it could be worked at from any side. The same drum-shaped table was then made in quantity through the Regency and nineteenth century for library and drawing room use.
That later life explains the naming. On Sellingantiques the object is listed as a drum table in 52 of 63 titles, and only a minority use the word rent at all, several hedging with "drum/rent" or "rent or library". Nine titles pair the form with library use, and three call it a centre table.
The table you are most likely to meet is mahogany, circular, on a central pedestal or column base, with a leather-inset or timber top. Mahogany accounts for 39 titles and appears with "drum" in 26 of them. Oak versions, often described as library drum tables, make up roughly one in ten, and rosewood about the same.
Dates come as broad labels more than years. The dealer period field records 19th Century 15 times and Regency 14, with Georgian, Edwardian, 18th Century and Victorian behind. Monarch tags appear independently, George III and George IV in eight titles and William IV twice. Only twelve listings carry a clean year, running 1800 to 1920.
Where The Range Sits
Timber and date do most of the work. Regency and Georgian pieces in rosewood or flame mahogany, particularly with brass inlay, hold the top of the range. Revival tables made in Georgian or Regency taste, Edwardian mahogany and plain oak sit at the bottom, a small but consistent slice of what comes to market.
Applied decoration lifts a table above the middle: inlay of any kind, brass lines let into the surface, and painted work. So does selected grain, the figured and flame mahogany named in titles, or the burr root maple of a single Scandinavian example.
Scale cuts both ways. Notably large tables and tables of small proportions are each flagged in titles, while the plain middle sizes pass without comment. Outline works the same way: octagonal tops appear three times and oval four, and none of them sits at the bottom. Swedish, Scandinavian and one hedged Irish attribution are singled out too.
Antique Rent Tables Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for rent tables, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
Mahogany is named in most rent table titles on Sellingantiques. Oak and rosewood are the only other timbers named more than once.
The Antique Rent Tables Glossary
- Drum table
- The usual trade name for the form, and by a wide margin the commonest word in titles on Sellingantiques. It describes the deep circular frieze of drawers sitting on a central pedestal.
- Frieze
- The deep band beneath the top, which on this form houses the drawers all the way round.
- Pedestal
- The central column and base carrying the top, the standard support for the drum form.
- Leather top
- An inset writing surface, named in four titles as "leather topped" or "Leather Top".
- Revival
- A later table made in an earlier style, so "Regency Revival" or "Georgian Revival" rather than the period itself.
- Rotating top
- A top that turns on the pedestal so any drawer can be brought to hand. One William IV table is described this way.
Antique Rent Tables: Frequently Asked Questions
Why are these called drum tables?
Drum describes the shape: a deep band of frieze under the top, standing on a single pedestal, reading as a drum on a stem.
The trade uses it far more readily than rent table. Of 63 titles on Sellingantiques, 52 say drum, and several that mention rent hedge with "drum/rent" or "rent or library".
What timber were rent tables made from?
Mahogany is close to the default, named in 39 of 63 titles and appearing with drum in 26 of them. Some titles specify figured or flame mahogany.
Oak and rosewood are the only other woods named more than once, oak often with a library label, rosewood clustered at the upper end. One Scandinavian table is in burr root maple.
How old is a typical rent table?
The dealer period field is dominated by two overlapping labels, 19th Century and Regency, with Georgian, Edwardian, 18th Century and Victorian behind them.
Only twelve listings carry a clean year, and those run from 1800 to 1920. Eighteenth-century examples are scarce, three in the period field, and one table is described as late 17th to early 18th century and Gothic.
Are all rent tables round?
Round is the presumption. Octagonal tops turn up three times in titles and oval four, one of the ovals in oak.
Both outlines are treated as worth naming, and neither sits at the bottom of the range.
Were rent tables made by known cabinetmakers?
Not in this archive. A scan of all 63 listings returned no named cabinetmaker, retailer or workshop at all.
What titles offer instead is period, timber and outline, plus the occasional regional attribution: a Swedish table, a Scandinavian one, and a single Irish suggestion hedged as "possibly".
How often do rent tables come up for sale?
Thirty-eight different dealers have listed the form on Sellingantiques, but only around eight come to market in a year.
So most dealers who handle one handle it once.