CHRISTIE'S SELLS AN EXPANDING CIRCULAR TABLE | April 6th 2008

Christie's

An original Robert Jupe expanding table is to be auctioned at Christie's this month. Fiammetta Rocco, Books and Arts editor of The Economist, describes this marvel of modern furniture design ...

From ECONOMIST.COM*

One question that has had furniture designers scratching their heads for years has been this: how do you get a round table that seats six, say, to expand at Christmas or Thanksgiving to fit 12, and still keep its circular shape?

One method is to have a bigger tabletop made from plywood and simply balance it, when needed, on top of the original. But it's not very elegant and the larger top needs to be stored somewhere when not being used, which can be a nuisance.

Poul Kjaerholm, a Dane who designed some highly innovative furniture and died in 1980, was an elegant practitioner of a rather more sophisticated idea: a round table with extra curved segments which you clip on round the outside edge, like the lip of a soup plate, in order to make it bigger.

But the most interesting mechanism has been around since the early 19th century. It is one of those classic products of human ingenuity, like the spade or the umbrella. And it has never been bettered.

On September 11th 1835, a London upholsterer named Robert Jupe registered patent 6,788 for "Jupe's Improved Expanding Table", an ingenious piece of engineering. Eight crescent-shaped iron bars are bolted in a circle onto the table's central base. The other ends of the bars are attached to the underside of the eight "slices of pie" that together make up the tabletop.

If you turn the tabletop 90 degrees anti-clockwise the crescent-shaped bars move the slices outward. Between each wedge is a gap shaped like a collar stiffener, with a point at one end. Into each of these spaces you slide a leaf made of the same wood as the original table top. And hey presto, your party has doubled.

To reduce the table, simply remove the eight leaves, twist the table top 90 degrees in a clockwise direction and the eight distant slices of pie slide together to make a circle again.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And Jupe's mechanism is so clever it has been widely copied. Oscar de la Renta in New York and Theodore Alexander in London make reproductions out of a veneered marine plywood that start at around £6,600 ($13,200).

D.B. Fletcher, an innovative designer with offices just outside London and in Arizona, makes a more sophisticated version, known as the Fletcher Capstan table, for yachts. Boat International described it as "pure magic".

But the most sought after are Jupe's originals. No one knows how many he made, or even how many survive. Over the past decade, only one, or at most two, have come up for auction each year, though higher prices may entice more of them onto the market. And prices have been rising.

In the early 1980s Christie's surprised many in the business when it put a £12,000 estimate on an 1835 Jupe table it was selling at its second site in South Kensington. The previous owner, a doctor, had used it in his consulting rooms in Harley Street, having bought it second-hand in 1915 for £15. At auction it fetched £35,000.

Prices rose slowly through the 1990s, but have leapt ahead since. In 2002, two Jupe tables fetched between £120,000 and £130,000 each. Both measured 82 inches in diameter when fully extended, comfortably seating 12-14.

A small increase in diameter, however, adds considerably to the circumference. And Jupe's bigger tables have been heavily fought over. When a 97-inch version, which seats 18, came up for sale at Christie's in June 2006, two bidders pushed the price up over the top estimate to £321,600. Perfection comes at a price.

A William IV Jupe extending circular mahogany dining table (pictured above) will be sold as part of the sale entitled "Thomas Hope and the Neo-Classical Vision" at Christie's, London, on April 24th, Lot 130. Estimate £100,000-150,000

(*Fiammetta Rocco writes the Art.view column on economist.com, and is the author of "The Miraculous Fever-tree".)