£**,000.00

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An oak table, 1853

Designed by George Edmund Street (1824-1881)

Made by George Myers, the builder of Cuddesdon College, (1803-1875)

Provenance: 1853 Cuddesdon College, Oxfordshire, (...) removed in the 1990's, private collection until 2019.

102 cm diameter 

67 cm high

In 1853 the diocesan architect for oxford, George Edmund Street, designed and built a theological college at Cuddesdon, Oxfordshire. Now called Ripon college, the building remains in use today.

The young Philip Webb joined Street's architectural practice on 16th may 1854 and Cuddesdon college was officially opened in June 1854. In January 1856 a young William Morris also joined Street's practice and was placed under the supervision of Philip Webb. 

The design of these tables, and this series of events, offer a bridge between A. W. N. Pugin's 'honesty of construction' ideals and the approaching arts and craft movement kick-started by William Morris and Philip Webb.

In 1856 William Morris and his friend Edward Burne-Jones lodged at rooms on Red Lion Square. The table Morris designed for these rooms owes a clear debt to the Cuddesdon college tables, and is now in the collection of The Wilson Art Gallery, Cheltenham.

In 1858 Webb left Street's office and started his own practice. Then in 1865, for a fledgling Morris, Marshall Faulkner & Co, he designed a table following the design of street's Cuddesdon tables, an early example of which we discovered and sold to an important private collection in 2017 (see the archive on our About page).

The influence of these tables can also be seen in the U.S. when observing and understanding the tables produced by Gustav Stickley around the turn of the twentieth century. See an example in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Earlier in 2019 we conducted a thorough survey of all the known examples of these tables, including photographing all 24 of the tables in the college today. Please contact us to see the results of this survey.

24 of the original 28 tables are still used daily in the student's dormitories and common rooms and are mentioned in the building's grade II listing. One table is in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, another is in a private British collection and a third (with associated legs) is un-accounted for.  

Accordingly, our table is one of only three tables (only two intact) that should ever appear on the open market.