What can one say? With the demise of Grosvenor House last year and its remaking as Masterpiece London, I must say, times being the way they are, the organizers are nothing if not gutsy.
Masterpiece London begins June 24 and runs through June 29 at the former Chelsea Barracks. The nearest tube station is Sloane Square.
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Working our way through the economic doldrums, and complaining about it to my wise old friend Anita Shanahan, her pithy rejoinder was ‘Well, it isn’t wartime, is it?’ She has posed that rhetorical question to me before, under similar circumstances to fore stop my whingeing. And, of course, as tough as things are, few of us in the developed west know hard times or privation. For Keith and me, we have yet to require any cinching up of our (designer) belts.
What’s put me in mind of this is a highly decorative and exquisitely wrought screen/room divider that, frankly, we are surprised is still in our inventory. With a montage of London landmarks either side, silkscreened on to Formica, it is framed in gilt bronze, with each panel having a pair of finials that are reminiscent of, depending upon whether your bent is connoiseurial or governmental, either the Palladian obelisk-shaped chimney pots of Chiswick House, or the Beaufort portcullis. Regardless, the overall effect betokens what became known as the Festival Style- a use of period motifs restated in a mid-20th century idiom, and rendered in contemporary materials. Formica? One forgets how profoundly innovative was this use of melamine resin in domestic interiors. I have to say, about the happiest moment of my mother’s life was when she had easy to clean Formica counters installed in her new (circa 1960) kitchen. Times do change…
But, of course, the introduction of new building, new design, and everything else associated with the 1951 Festival of Britain, yet surviving nicely in London in the form of the Southbank Centre, was to jar a nation into looking forward, that had been so beggared physically and spiritually in the recent past. The extent of the devastation just in London is hard to comprehend, but as the physical damage was cleared away, that the nation, for nearly a decade after the conclusion of the conflict remained on ration was a daily reminder of a conflict that, for most Britons, was not yet completely over.
Suffice to say, the only thing Keith and I have had to queue for lately is to pay for our popcorn at the movies. So, right again, Mrs. Shanahan- hard times? Hardly…
It could be said axiomatic that, for furniture at least, the maintenance and continued production of a particular type of piece betokens its continued practical use. So with the Pembroke table. Note the pictured example, late George III period, and dateable to about 1790. A generation later than the Pembroke table illustrated in yesterday’s blog, and, with its banding a slightly more formal piece of furniture, it is also minus the elaborate cross stretcher of those tables of a generation before.
By this point, the Pembroke table had, pardon the expression, come out of the closet. Banded, inlaid, often painted and frequently of woods even more exotic than mahogany, the table becomes a front of house piece, put to whatever use a small table might be used in a public place. Note, however, that the napery drawer is still present, so one might surmise its at least occasional use for the service of some sort of consumable- probably tea. The late Georgian example illustrated was of a size that it could conveniently support a tea service, with its top when completely open, of an oval size that would support a silver tray of corresponding perimeter. At the risk of putting my gentle blogophiles off their afternoon tea, I must say that, despite its more polite use, the napery contained in the table might not have been any cleaner than it had been in times past. So much for the good old days.
Continuing in recognizable form, here is another example from yet later, this time of the Regency period and dating to about 1810. Again, banding, but rosewood, that favorite of all Regency period exotic woods. And, kind of a plus size. The ubiquitous napery drawer signifying the link with food service, but the plus size of the table, opening to a very wide 47” with both leaves raised, argues for its use less for the service of breakfast for one, or a tea for several, but as a surface for a heavier repast, probably for two. And so the later period Pembroke tables are frequently termed, then, ‘Supper tables’.
Handy as the pocket on a shirt, as I drift in to Fresno farming idiom to describe the indispensable piece of household furniture commonly known as the Pembroke table.
One assumes the name derives from its original design and use in a household of the Earls of Pembroke. Offhand, I can’t recall any particular prominence given to Pembroke tables at Wilton, the Palladian-inspired Pembroke manse in Wiltshire. Chippendale’s Director…makes no mention of Pembroke or Wilton, but does provide us with a design remarkably similar to the table illustrated. The design is designated ‘Breakfast table’ and it is presumed, at least in the middle of the 18th century, that is the primary use to which the table was put. Of smallish size, it could either be carried, or more likely, shoved against the wall with leaves dropped, 
inconspicuous when not in use. That castors were a ubiquitous feature of Pembroke tables makes the latter seem likely. Our example pictured above has leather-wheeled castors that would not either scratch a wood floor or tarnish a carpet or floor cloth in the way a metal wheel might.
Smallish in size, but then, its original function was for the service of breakfast in a small room, or closet, adjacent to a larger bedroom. A fair amount of activity took place in rooms known then as closets but we would more likely think of today as a dressing room. That a room was small made it easier to heat and to stay that way, and when one is dressing from the skin out, well, some of my gentle readers may be hardy souls who find frosty exposure in the buff bracing, but not me. As well, that breakfast might be served in the same (warm) room makes a considerable amount of sense, unless one wants to eat one’s eggs and bacon frigidly cold. The table’s frieze drawer was for the storage of napery, precisely in the same way an equivalent drawer would be used on a sideboard. That napkins and a small table cloth might be stored between uses might seem strange, but, frankly, the same soiled linens would be used and used again, and again. This may sound horrible in light of our modern fetish toward hygiene, but one must remember, the 18th century was doubtless a very dirty, smelly age. With cooking odors, smoke, and seldom washed bodies all contributing to the typical domestic pong, that there may have been a grease stain or two (or three or four) on one’s table linen would not have seemed amiss.
One assumes the Pembroke table would have been open for a time after breakfast was consumed. Note the elaborate and rather overstated flattened stretcher on our piece and on the design from Chippendale. Doubtless the tray upon which one had consumed one’s breakfast could then be placed upon the stretcher, to be cleared away later, with the then vacant flat surface functioning very well to support a book, writing implements, or anything that needed a flat surface as the gentleman made his postprandial preparations to meet the rest of the day.
The Pembroke table continues tomorrow.