A PAIR OF CHINESE EXPORT BLACK AND GILT-LACQUER DEMI-LUNE GAMES TABLES

These elegant games tables demonstrate the success of the Chinese export trade in combining Oriental arts with Western forms to appeal to the European market during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Lacquered furniture was being made in such centres as Nanking, Tonking and Canton, following Western forms copied from actual examples sent to China or from printed European designs. It reached a high point of production and popularity with the Western trade during the early 19th century, when these examples were made.
While Western designs were being copied, these games tables are unusual in their demi-lune form. Carl Crossman in his The Decorative Arts of The China Trade describes a pair of tables that may be this very pair, sadly they are not illustrated.
A rectangular example, also with two additional gate-legs, was commissioned by Nicholas and Abby Brown of Providence and bears their initials 'NAB' (illustrated in C. L. Crossman, op. cit., Woodbridge, 1991, p. 271, pl. 148). Another pair in the manner of a Hepplewhite design is illustrated ibid, p. 270, p. 147.