Elder Wing of Australian Art: Audio Described Tour
Work 4 of 15

Not all furniture is designed purely with function in mind. This elaborately crafted marquetry table, created around 1877, was conceived less as a card table and more as an exhibition piece, to showcase the skills of its South Australian makers. It is a tour de force of the cabinetmaker’s art.

Its style is that of a ‘loo table’, common in the eighteenth and nineteenth century for playing the card game loo. As with most loo tables, this example has a hinge mechanism that allows the top to fold into a vertical position, for easy storage when not in use. What distinguishes it from similar tables, however, is the intricacy of its geometric marquetry inlay – its top and pedestal legs are inlaid with an estimated 30,000 pieces of native timbers, including Australian cedar, pine, stringybark, red gum and black gum.

The table was created by Heinrich Hugentobler and Conrad Sturm, whose brief cabinetmaking partnership operated from a workshop in the Adelaide Hills at Blumberg, now called Birdwood. Local newspaper reports from the time indicate that Hugentobler, a Swiss joiner, was the table’s designer and principal maker, with assistance from Sturm, a talented Adelaide-born cabinetmaker of German descent. As an indication of the amount of labour that went into its creation, the table was initially valued at 260 pounds – roughly the sum that a skilled cabinetmaker would earn in a year and a half – although it was later offered for sale at less than a third of that amount.

Almost immediately after its completion early in 1878, the table went on display in Adelaide at the Chamber of Manufactures in Waymouth Street, and soon after it was exhibited at Adelaide’s Royal Agricultural and Horticultural Show. The following year it was shown at the Sydney International Exhibition, then a year later at the Melbourne International Exhibition of 1880. Such annual exhibitions in the late nineteenth century were an opportunity for producers and manufacturers in diverse fields to show off their wares and skills to a broader domestic and international audience, it also showcased national pride. As desired, the table generated considerable publicity for Hugentobler and Sturm in the Adelaide and Sydney press, although not all of it was positive: one Sydney critic lauded their craftsmanship but considered the elaborate inlay design to be a little over-the-top.

This wooden table constructed by cabinet makers Henry Hugentobler and Conrad Sturm, German immigrants to colonial South Australia, was made in 1878 in the town of Blumberg, now known as Birdwood, in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia.

The table is 76.5 cm high and the circular tabletop is 138.5 cm in diameter.

The table has a tripod base. Three carved angled legs hold up a vertical pedestal. A tabletop sits centrally on top of the pedestal.

A ring of wood is attached to the underside of the tabletop, just in from the circular edge. Known as the apron, it would be positioned across the thighs of people seated around the table. With the top of the apron attached to the underside of the table, the lower edge is carved into an undulating pattern with downward points that evenly repeat six times around the circumference.

The table is highly decorated, for the table top, the apron, the plinth and the legs are covered with a geometric pattern.

Using a technique known as parquetry, different types of wood have been precisely cut into triangles, diamonds, squares and rectangles. The different shapes, about the size of a postage stamp, are meticulously pieced together and glued to create the pattern.

The small shapes are made from cedar, pine, stringy bark, red gum and black gum wood. The different types of wood are different shades of brown, from yellow-brown to dark brown, to almost black.

The pedestal and legs of the table are decorated with small brown diamond shapes, one below the other, in vertical lines down their lengths. Narrow repeating rows of zig-zags radiate outwards from the lines of diamonds. The same zig-zag pattern decorates the apron.

The top of the table is entirely covered with the parquetry pattern.

At the centre are 12 squares in a four by four grid. Each square is patterned with stripes, a simplified four-petalled flower at the centre.

Concentric rows of the zig-zag pattern, radiate outwards from this central square grid. Lines of diamonds and triangles amongst the zig-zags.

The entire table is smooth and shiny as the small glued pieces of wood have been sanded and polished.

The table top is usually horizontal, however a hidden mechanism in the top of the pedestal allows for the table top to be tipped vertically.