A rare and important Russian Neoclassical brass-mounted kingwood, amaranth and marquetry games table, attributed to Christian Meyer Saint Petersburg, circa 1790

Private Collection, New York

Chinese Porcelain Company, From Paris to St. Petersburg, New York, October 6-31, 1998, pp. 78-82.

With a few very minor age cracks to veneer. The brass inlay and mounts with traces of ocidation and surface dirt. In very good overall condition.
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This table is part of a small group produced in the 1790s and now securely attributed to the great German cabinetmaker Christian Meyer, who arrived in St. Petersburg in 1774 and is responsible for some of the finest furniture provided to Catherine the Great and her court. His design, which owes much to English prototypes, is a perfect illustration of the Russian court's obsession with richness and sophistication which ultimately surpassed the Western taste that it sought to emulate.

Five tables of this type are known: three, slightly richer, incorporate ormolu mounts at the top of the legs and on the feet: one sold Sotheby's London 12 June 2002, lot 374; one sold Christie's London 20 June 1985, lot 69; one at Pavlovsk Palace illustrated A. Koutchoumov, Pavlovsk Palace and Park, Leningrad, 1976, p. 150. The last, clearly commissioned by Catherine the Great, would support the hypothesis that this whole group, as has been suggested, were an Imperial commission. Only one other example is known which, in common with this lot, has wooden feet and wooden collars at the tops of the legs.