table

Side tables with a small diameter on a tall foot and baluster stem are a French invention. They developed from a popular shape of the 17th century, a table with figural support that was called Guéridon, allegedly after a Moorish galley slave and torchbearer who is celebrated in Provençal songs. The tables served primarily as stands for candleholders, and sometimes figural candelabra themselves were called Guéridon, too. Side tables became an indispensable necessity and live on, basically unchanged, to the present day. This glass table was produced in England, and its origin is well documented. The metal mount of the baluster shaft bears the mark of Birmingham's F. & C. Osler Company, which specialized in the making of glass for the Indian market in the second half of the 19th century. An article in the Indian Daily News of December 4, 1883, mentions blue tables in the Osler showroom in Calcutta.