The tabletop gets out of the way
Release the mechanism and the decorated top slides backwards while a fitted drawer moves towards the sitter. One part withdraws as the other approaches, bringing the hidden working space within reach.1
The movement changes what the top is for. Closed, it is the surface you see and use. Open, it becomes the cover that has moved aside. Within the drawer, a central panel can be tilted by hand for reading, with compartments to either side.2
Oeben made the table in Paris; it is now Getty object 70.DA.84.3 Only about seventy-four centimetres wide, it manages to offer several positions for things and for the person using them. The ingenuity is in making those positions appear when needed.2
Closing it stores the next opening
Two spring barrels, one at each end of the case, drive the present mechanism. Toothed rails coordinate the top and drawer as they move in opposite directions. Pushing the table closed rewinds the springs.2
The closed position is therefore part of the action. It prepares the energy for another opening. The case stays fixed on its legs while the working parts travel within and above it.
This makes the return movement as interesting as the reveal. What looks like tidying away is also preparing the furniture for its next use.
The leaves used to be green
Even the surface has changed more than a first glance suggests. Getty’s technical study identified the nearly black leaves and stems as holly, a naturally pale wood that had been dyed olive green. The dye darkened with age.2
The flowers are assembled from cut wood, but their colours were never limited to the natural shades of timber. A bright bouquet once accompanied the opening trick. Today’s darker tabletop records another kind of transformation, happening far more slowly than the movement of the drawer.
Keeping the trick working
Unused screw holes and other traces show that the mechanism has been altered.2 Such evidence adds the work of later hands to the springs and veneers. Keeping a complicated table usable was a continuing task.
The pleasure of the object lies in the two movements meeting: the top gets out of the way just as the drawer arrives. Behind that brief, graceful action is a long history of making, adjustment and repair.