Antique Sofa Tables
A long, narrow drawing-room table with a drawer or two in the frieze and a hinged flap at each end, made to stand behind or beside a sofa for reading, writing, tea and games.
Antique Sofa Tables
The classic form is rectangular, with one or two drawers in the frieze and a drop flap at each short end, raised on a fly bracket to lengthen the top. It stands either on end supports joined by a stretcher, trestle or lyre cut, or on a central pedestal with splayed legs. It appeared in Britain in the late eighteenth century and stayed a drawing-room standard through the Regency.
The table you are most likely to meet is a Regency mahogany or rosewood two-drawer drop-leaf example. Mahogany appears in 582 of 1,400 titles and rosewood in 272, and Regency heads the dated field with 344 listings. Regency mahogany and Regency rosewood together account for a large slice of that.
The heading as dealers use it runs wider than the classic form. Side, centre, console, hall and lamp tables are filed here in quantity, along with Pembroke and drop-leaf tables, library and writing tables, and many titles hedge with a double name such as "sofa/side table". A later block of burr walnut, Victorian, Edwardian and 1920s pieces makes up perhaps a fifth.
Dating is often loose. Only 424 listings carry a clean year, and "19th Century" (338) sits almost level with Regency, while "1800s" adds another 86. Period words and years sometimes disagree inside one listing, a Regency table dated 1920 or a William IV table filed as 18th Century, so the descriptive wording tells you more than the field.
Where The Range Splits
Timber and figure do most of the sorting. Coromandel, satinwood, amboyna, goncalo alves, burr yew, pollard oak and mahogany described as figured, flame or curl cluster in the upper half of the range; plain mahogany and pine sit at the bottom. Cut brass inlay pushes the same way, and brass-inlaid rosewood recurs in the highest bracket.
Authorship counts when it is firm. Stamped or attributed pieces, and the Scottish and Irish names that surface once or twice each, appear only in the upper reaches, while "in the Gillows manner" and similar style wording sits well below. Period beats revival too: Regency Style and Regency revival titles carrying 1920s dates gather low.
Being the real form matters. An unqualified Regency rosewood sofa table runs to the very top, while titles hedging across several names, along with Sutherland, Pembroke and small side tables, occupy the lower brackets. Scale works either way, with small appearing throughout, and pairs and large pieces at the extreme top.
Antique Sofa Tables Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for sofa 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.
Sofa tables have been listed on Sellingantiques since 2008, with over 600 through the archive since then.
Gillows
The Antique Sofa Tables Glossary
- Drop leaf
- A hinged extension at each short end, raised on a fly bracket to lengthen the top. Also called a drop flap.
- End support
- The top carried on a solid trestle or standard at each end rather than on corner legs, the two joined by a stretcher.
- Lyre end
- An end support cut and strung to the outline of a lyre, a Regency signature.
- Pedestal
- A single central column on splayed feet, the alternative to end supports.
- Brass inlaid
- Brass lines or scrollwork let into the surface, common on Regency rosewood, and sometimes described as cut brass inlay.
- Burr
- Veneer cut from a knotty growth, giving the swirled figure of burr walnut, oak, elm or yew.
Antique Sofa Tables: Frequently Asked Questions
How many sofa tables come up each year?
Around 142 reach the market on Sellingantiques in a year, and 250 different dealers have listed one at some point.
That spread tells you it isn't a specialism. It's a form almost every furniture dealer keeps in stock sooner or later.
What period are most of them?
Regency leads the dated field with 344 listings, and "19th Century" follows closely with 338. Georgian, Victorian and 18th Century entries come after.
There is a genuine twentieth-century tail as well, with 57 pieces tagged 1920s and 40 tagged 1900s. The dated field as a whole runs from 1750 to 1930.
Which timbers turn up?
Mahogany and rosewood describe six listings in ten. Burr walnut forms a substantial group at the later end.
Beyond that the archive throws up single appearances of coromandel, palisander, amboyna, goncalo alves, zebrawood, burr birch, burr ash, satin birch, pollard oak, burr yew, Cuban mahogany, Hungarian ash, fruitwood, chestnut and cherrywood.
Are sofa tables sold in pairs?
Pairs are a real sub-population rather than a curiosity. The word pair appears in 46 titles.
A matched pair of Regency mahogany sofa tables sits at the very top of the sampled range.
Why do listings carry two table names?
Dealers file side, centre, console, hall, lamp, Pembroke, library and writing tables under this heading, and titles often hedge across several of them at once.
Side appears in 190 titles, centre in 112, console in 105 and lamp in 79. The wording tells you which form is actually on offer.
Do any unusual forms appear?
A Regency rosewood umbrella games table is the most unusual single piece in the samples. A Regency lady's screen writing table and a Regency sewing table in burr ash each turn up once and nowhere else.
Non-European pieces are the rarest origin, with a Ceylonese occasional centre table, Anglo-Indian work and Chinese Qing hardwood altar and console tables accounting for barely a handful of listings.
One sampled table carries a Florence Nightingale provenance, the only named historical owner in the archive.