Description
A Table Built for Both Feast and Farewell
This magnificent Irish pine gateleg table stretches a full eight feet when fully opened, its two broad drop-leaves supported by elegantly turned baluster gate legs that swing outward on pivoting frames — a design unchanged in its essentials since the early Georgian era. Constructed entirely of knotty pine, the top is formed from wide, generously grained boards whose patina speaks quietly of centuries of use: bleached, waxed, and worn into the warm amber of old honey.
The base is a study in honest country craftsmanship — eight turned columns with classical ring-and-reel detailing, united by a system of squared stretchers set low to the floor. When the leaves are folded down, the table collapses to a narrow console barely 18 inches deep, hugging a wall with all the discretion of a sideboard. Raised up and opened, it transforms into a generous oval that could seat ten with ease.
On the Name
In rural Ireland the hunt table earned its name from the post-hunt tradition: riders returning from a day’s fox-hunting would gather at a table just like this one, standing or perching informally, helping themselves from dishes laid out along its length. The leaves raised, the food set out, the muddy boots still on — no ceremony, only appetite and company.
But the very same table answered a darker call. In Irish Catholic tradition, when a member of the household died, the body would be laid out at home for the wake — a vigil lasting one or sometimes two nights before burial. The long gateleg table, pulled from its folded position against the wall and opened to its full extent, served as the bier upon which the deceased rested. Neighbours and kin would gather around it through the night, telling stories, drinking poitín, and keeping the dead company on their last night among the living.
This dual purpose — feast table and funeral bier — is why the form is known interchangeably as the Hunt Table and the Wake Table. No other piece of Irish country furniture carries quite the same weight of occasion. The one object in the house equally suited to welcoming life in and easing death out.
This particular example, with its unusually generous 96-inch span, would have belonged to a family of some standing — large enough to host the whole parish at a wake, or a full hunt party at table. The pine has been stripped back to its natural state and lightly waxed, showing the wood’s extraordinary figure and the soft silver-gold that only old pine achieves.
Dimensions coming soon.
