Tables Furniture

In the hills of Burma and Thailand, a bronze drum cast with frogs was beaten to call the monsoon. Antique tables span China, Southeast Asia, India, Africa and Europe, and the drum is only one of them. Chinese altar tables in Shanxi elm, kang tables made for the heated brick platforms of northern China and zitan stands with stone inset tops sit beside the rain drums of the Karen and other peoples. Bamileke and Bamenda stools from Cameroon and Nupe stools from Nigeria serve as side tables; Ethiopian Oromo tables, Naga pieces from the hills of northeast India, Japanese low tables and French consoles widen the field.

Most of the antiques are nineteenth and twentieth century, alongside contemporary tables in resin, oak, iron and bronze. An elm altar table behind a sofa, a rain drum beside a reading chair, a kang table on a wool rug: the forms are old, and the room does not mind.