THE TOP MID-18TH CENTURY

The Cantonese games-table top is serpentined with 'candlebearer' corners after the George II fashion featured on a music-desk pattern in a 1730s trade-sheet issued by the London cabinet-maker Thomas Potter (T. Murdoch and C. Gilbert, John Channon and brass-inlaid furniture, London, 1993, p. 19, fig. 11). Its central scalloped compartment is flowered with shell-inlay, like the candlebearers and adjoining counter-hollows. Such games/pier tables, imported by the East India Companies, provided appropriate furnishings for the 'India-paper' parlours that became fashionable at this period. The same India-flowered central compartment features on a similar baize-lined Chinese table illustrated ibid., pl. XIII.
A padouk card-table with a very closely-related mother-of-pearl inlaid playing-surface, was sold anonymously, Christie's New York, 25 October 1986, lot 147 and again, in these Rooms, 9 July 1992, lot 47.