This sofa table was made for the Regency extension to Paxton House. The extension was built to the designs of King’s architect to Scotland, Robert Reid, and furnished by Scotland’s most outstanding cabinetmaker, William Trotter, to house the inherited art and book collections of Patrick Home.

The sofa table is one of Trotter’s greatest masterpieces of design and carving featuring ‘cotton reel and bead’ mouldings, tensed lion claw feet, and exquisite lyre-shaped supports with a turned urn in the centre of the stretcher. It was commissioned by Nancy Stephens and George Home and is made mainly of rosewood which was extracted at the time from Brazil by enslaved people clearing tropical rainforest for plantations.

Nancy, who was born in Grenada in 1778 was the daughter of Diamond estate manager, George Stephens. The Stephens family were close friends with Ninian and Penelope Home. The Homes helped the Stephens family by enabling Nancy to come to Scotland, aged just five, for her education. She was looked after by George Home and Jean Home. Nancy retained connections with her enslaved nanny Kate, and freed her in 1802.

George had inherited Ninian’s plantation, Waltham, in Grenada in 1795 and had spent huge sums of money rebuilding it after Fédon’s Uprising. However, recent research has shown that the sums of money expended on this furniture by Trotter and the extension were not derived from the profits of slavery. We now know that the first income George received from Waltham estate was £100 in 1815. Trotter charged £23.10s for this table in his invoice; equivalent of around £1450 in 2022, however, it would cost a great deal more for the equivalent table to made today.

Conservation work

This table was in a perilous state prior to urgent and extensive, grant-funded conservation work taking place in 2021 and 2022. The lower supports for the table had been repeatedly repaired in the past (prior to ownership by The Paxton Trust) and were very unstable. The whole table rocked at the slightest touch, and it was ready to split, and it had to be removed from display. Contractions in the top of the table meant the side flaps could not be lowered. There were several missing veneers and beading decorations.

Accredited furniture conservator, Tim Phelps, worked on this table deconstructing it and carefully re-enforcing it. He also adjusted the construction of the table top so that the flaps could fold down properly, reattached veneers and loose carvings with traditional Scotch glue. During this work, rosewood timber which had not been exposed to light since the table was constructed, was revealed – showing its purply-black / dark brown original colour. The Leche Trust, The Pilgrim Trust, and Museums Galleries Scotland grants supported this work.

In late 2022, the Accredited furniture conservator, Fergus Purdy repaired and re-instated missing sections of the knob handles on the drawers of the sofa table and undertook some finishing work. His work was funded by Museums Galleries Scotland.