These card tables are embellished with Grecian-black inlay in a fashion that George Smith refers to as a 'noble pursuit after classic originals'. Their frieze pattern, displaying lozenge compartments in Grecian-fretted tablets, features in a design for a Grecian-pedimented wardrobe in Smith's Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1808, pl.133. Smith wrote of a related 'Library Table' that 'the ornamental part of the drawers is intended as an inlay of ebony' (Smith, op.cit., pls.84 and 87).
A closely related sofa table by the same cabinet-maker with virtually identical supports was sold in these Rooms from the Collection of Evelyn G. Haynes, 23 October 2002, lot 205. Another sofa table sold anonymously, Christie's London, 20 November 1986, lot 156 (£17,600). A pair of library tables with the same character inlay and possibly from the same workshop was offered Christie's London, 10 April 1986, lot 112, whilst a pembroke table with the same characteristic inlay in the Victorian & Albert Museum, is illustrated in F.L. Hinkley, The more Significant Regency Furniture, 1800-1830, New York, 1991, p. 47, pl. 27, fig. 61.
One of the tables bears a label that may identify it from the collection of the Bedford Hotel in Brighton. The hotel had an interesting collection of Georgian and Regency furniture, examples of which are illustrated in the first edition of The Dictionary of English Furniture, vol.III, pp. 112, 268 and 315. A Regency serving table from the collection, attributed to George Oakley, sold in these Rooms, 9 April 2003, lot 27.