Antique English Night Tables
Antique English commodes were around from the 1760s and usually made of mahogany, with a raised back edge or galleried tops and they sometimes had carrying handles above pairs of doors and shaped aprons. From the 1770s firms such as Gillows of Lancaster made tambour fronted night tables with cross banding, ebony and boxwood lines or raised panels surrounding flamed mahogany veneers and they usually had casters.
From the 1770s night tables became more light in both form and colour and as a result bow fronted commodes emerged. Eventually the heavy designes of the 1760s was superseded by the finer pot cupboards, They were much narrower and this form was widely manufactured in the Victorian and Edwardian periods. They were very rarely made in pairs and it is unusual to find exact matching pairs today especially in the english antique furniture suites.
