This table is a fine example of the 18th century fashion for specialised furniture designed to suit particular interests and hobbies. It’s beautifully crafted by a skilled cabinet-maker for a client with plenty of money. Look at the inlay work in the games boards, the edgings, the pairs of dice – and all over. Set in the walnut surface are maple, plum, mahogany and other woods, expertly cut and fitted together.

The later 1700s saw more and more furniture created exclusively for people’s leisure activities. Clever metamorphic step-chairs for private libraries, and card tables for the drawing-room are two examples I’ve already written about. Ladies’ (needle)work tables were surprisingly often combined with chess boards, and are sometimes as elaborate and decorative as the games table shown here. Stylish, ingenious pieces of furniture suited the mood of the times.

Games boards can be seen occasionally on earlier furniture, like the amazing 16th century “Eglantine” table covered with fine marquetry at Hardwick Hall, England. (Detail pictured below.) But the 18th century brought something new. The table to the right is not as fine as the one in the main picture, but it is probably more typical:

The top is inlaid as a chessboard on the under side, and is made to slide in grooves and to be reversible when required. The top when removed discloses two compartments fitted for backgammon. This game is one of considerable antiquity in England, and was generally referred to as “the tables”. Although now relegated to country vicarages and the homes of the smaller squirearchy, it was a fashionable amusement during the eighteenth century, and one at which considerable sums were won and lost by the “bucks” of the Georgian period and the days of the Regency.
Herbert Cecsinsky, English Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, 1909

Porcelain, and more table details

The bigger porcelain box on the table at the top of the page is for game tokens or counters, and was made by Meissen, probably between 1750 and 1780. The little green one is a Meissen snuff box made c1745.  Inside the lid (sorry, not visible) is a scene of people playing tric-trac, a kind of backgammon. The glass beakers with playing card decoration are the oldest things in sight; they come from early 1700s Saxony.

The German table, in the Deutsches Historisches Museum, is approx. 35 by 29 inches, and 29 inches high. The English Georgian table is 28 and a half inches high. The top is only 20 by 22 inches when the side flaps are down. When up, they rest on hinged supports, and make the table’s full length 39 inches.

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: Games table, Hardwick Hall table. More picture info here

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Many finely-crafted card tables were made in the 1700s and 1800s. The social lives of prosperous families in America, Britain, and other parts of Europe depended on having a card table, or two, for friends to play at in the evening.

Before 1700, card-playing was popular with very rich people, and less so with people who were moderately wealthy. It stayed fashionable with the aristocracy in 18th century Europe. Wealthy gamblers sometimes lost huge sums of money in gaming houses or private mansions where a ‘banker’ oversaw games of chance like faro or basset.

During the 1700s and 1800s more people came to have more leisure time, and they furnished their homes to reflect this. Comfortably-off hosts in middle-sized houses organised card tables for their evening guests. People still played for money but the games, like whist or piquet, involved more skill and less betting. The players might enjoy conversation more than cards once a nice little group was gathered round the table. This often provides a useful scenario for dialogue in novels. Young women confide secrets over cards in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, and older ladies whisper animatedly at Cranford card tables described by Elizabeth Gaskell.

Before it became fashionable to have special furniture crafted by cabinet-makers, cards were often played at tables covered in a floor-length cloth, as you can see in various paintings of elegant 17th century players. Artists also show poorer card players, usually men, gathered round a stool or barrel when they had time for card playing.

Decorative or simple?

Early 19th century Empire or Regency tables, and later Federal Era tables in the USA, generally had fold-over tops concealing a playing surface, which might be covered in green baize. Carved pedestal bases had legs that could swing out to support the square opened top. Mahogany was a popular choice, but walnut, maple, rosewood or satinwood were also used.

Ornamentation varied. Later card tables tended to have more elaborate flourishes than the relatively restrained pre-1800 designs. A semi-circular or demi-lune Georgian flip-top table might have simple tapered legs. Inlaid surface patterns were likely to be discreet geometric designs. Whether the top folded into a rectangle or semi-circle, a typical card table was about 30 inches high and 36 inches across: a good size for four people to chat as well as play. Some tables were made with recessed holders for coins or tokens. (See big picture below.)

In Victorian times social card playing was by no means only for the grandest section of society. A card table was almost essential for households aspiring to a middle-class way of life. An 1856 book* advising British people how to set up house on annual budgets of £100 upward assumed there would be a card table in the drawing room, even if it was only mahogany veneer on a softwood frame, with a simple round or square top.

By this time a particular style of simple oval or round table was known as a ‘loo table’. Loo, or lanterloo, was a popular game in the Victorian era, though its origins are  older. Sometimes these tables had a tilting top (not folding in half), perhaps with inlaid veneer decoration, and so they could be kept upright by a wall.

There were always a few people who kept away from card playing for religious or moral reasons – but not always the ones you would expect. In George Eliot’s Middlemarch there’s a clergyman who plays cards well enough to pad out his modest income with regular winnings, though he attracts disapproval from some of his neighbours.

*JH Walsh, A Manual of Domestic Economy: suited to families spending from £100 to £1000, London 1856

More on American card tables influenced by cabinet-makers like Sheraton in Philadelphia Empire Furniture by Allison Boor

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: first mahogany table, Hooper table, pair of tables. More picture info here

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