A REGENCY POLLARD OAK CIRCULAR CENTRE OR DINING TABLETHE DESIGN ATTRIBUTED TO WILLIAM ATKINSON AND PROBABLY MADE BY GEORGE BULLOCK, CIRCA 1815The radial veneered top centred with a brass marquetry roundel72cm high, the top 140cm diameterThis centre or dining table with plinth supported and hollow-sided 'altar' pedestal is designed in the early 19th century Grecian antique manner popularised by Thomas Hope's Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807. The manufacture of related furniture in British oak was popularised by national fervour during the early 19th century wars, It was particularly promoted by the London and Liverpool cabinet maker George Bullock (d.1818). Amongst the purchasers of Bullocks oak furniture was the author and antiquarian Sir Walter Scott of Abbotsford, who mentioned his 'beautiful dining table of Scottish oak clouded in the most beautiful style' in his Reliquiae Trottsciences (A, Coleridge, The Work of George Bullock, cabinet maker, in Scotland: II, Connoisseur, May 1965, pp 16-17). Bullock was also employed to furnish Napoleon's residence on St. Helena, and it was noted in The Times, 25th October, 1815, that this furniture had been designed in, the pure simplicity of the Grecian style by William Atkinson (d.1839). For a very similar but smaller table, see Christie's, Important English Furniture, 24th May 2007, 26,400.