Description

The console table or credence stood on two legs and was attached to a wall at the underside of the top. As a French form, such tables were often elaborately carved and gilded. In Quebec, console tables were always made in pairs, and although it was not so in France, they were usually church rather than domestic pieces. This pair (968.113.2 and 973.414.24), dispersed in different collections for some years, was reunited in separate ROM acquisitions.

The tables are constructed with the usual mortise-and-tenon joints and are relief-carved with heavy rococo and foliate designs, including openwork leg stretchers. They must have been made separately because the dimensions are not identical. They can, however, be quite precisely dated because it is known that the Quévillon group built the interior of the church at Longueuil in the years 1818-1821.