Carved for a house that wanted you to know whose table it was. Found in Avignon and dating to the 19th century, this rare extending table carries a geometric parquet top over a frieze of carved scrollwork, raised on heavy carved trestle ends joined by a stretcher. Into each end a coat of arms has been cut deep into the wood, and the whole has been bleached back to a pale, soft surface. Made in the Henri II taste, the 19th-century revival of French Renaissance furniture, it opens the old Renaissance way, a hidden leaf drawing out from beneath each end to lengthen the table without ever leaving it. Sylvie would give it a dining room of its own, kept closed for an everyday table and drawn out at both ends when the whole party arrives.
