Exceptional features: Only six legs (gates hinged to stretcher, two legs thus dispensed with). Additional bar across two central stretchers. Rare example. Date 1670.] [Illustration: GATE TABLE. Good example of ball turning. A type which survived well into the eighteenth century. (_By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin._)] [Illustration: COLLAPSIBLE TABLE WITH RARE X STRETCHER. _C._ 1660. The top folds over. Fine example. (_In the collection of Lady Mary Holland._)] [Illustration: PRIMITIVE GATE-LEG TABLE. SEVENTEENTH OR EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Gates at one end. Made by a local carpenter or wheelwright not conversant with turning.] As exhibiting two types as wide asunder as the poles, and yet not far removed in point of time, the two tables illustrated, p. 101, make a curious contrast. The upper one, in date about 1660, is a slender, graceful example, with the unusual =X=-shaped stretcher. It will be seen from the illustration that the two stretchers when closed fit flat with the legs and the top flaps over, thus making the table practically collapsible. The lower Table, of late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, is a somewhat primitive form, with the gates at one end. This has obviously been made by a local carpenter or wheelwright not conversant with turning, as the shaping of the legs is strongly suggestive of the rude fashioning of the shafts of a farm wagon. =Walnut and Mahogany Varieties.=--As the mid-Jacobean period is left behind, and walnut is the chief wood used in ornamental turned work, so the character of the gate table begins to incline towards the technique more suitable to walnut than to oak. The turning, more easily done in the former wood, becomes more intricate. Hence some examples appear which are practically types of the walnut age. But, in general, the old gate-leg table is a survival throughout the William and Mary and Queen Anne periods, wherein country makers clung to the oak form and employed oak still in its manufacture. The William and Mary Gate Table illustrated (p. 105) is constructed with one gate. It is small in size, practically being an ornamental or occasional table. It has a fine character, and the "barley sugar" pattern is deeply turned. Side by side with this is a small square-topped Gate Table with the pillar-leg, denoting a reversion to early type. The stretcher is of the old trestle form. Both these pieces, on account of their small size and well-balanced construction, show that considerable attention was being paid to symmetry. Such specimens can readily be transplanted to more modern surroundings, and yet in some subtle manner harmonise with later furniture.