M & D Deep Duck Read. That wonderful Card Table

[Elisabeth Romberg]

Turns out there is such a thing as a mechanical card table!

This one is by Roentgen, Abraham, born 1711 - died 1793. 
It is made twixt 1745-1755. It’s Cherry, in the solid with carved decoration and veneered on a carcase of pine, oak and beech, with additional veneers of padouk and repairs in mahogany

This ingenious table allows the user to choose one of two surfaces, either for playing cards or for writing. When the writing surface is open, the user has access to a hidden nest of drawers, which pop up suddenly on springs, when a catch is released. It was made in Neuwied in Germany in about 1755-60 by Abraham Roentgen, a cabinet-maker who had spent some time in London in the 1730s, where such mechanical tables were first made. In London he also practised the technique of inlaying engraved brass plaques into furniture. For this table, he has based his central plaque on a figure of ‘Winter’, from an engraving by Gottfried Bernhard Göz (1708-1774), who was a fellow member of the Moravian Church, of which Roentgen was an active member. Roentgen became one of Germany’s best-known cabinet-makers and his son David, who carried on his workshop, became celebrated throughout Europe, selling in Paris and to the Empress Catherine the Great in St Petersburg.



> 5. jan. 2015 kl. 20.08 skrev Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>:
> 
> p. 6. Then to the almost-famous Card Table. Discuss its
> self-referential metaphoric discription, if it is? ..make sure you
> incorporate  'sinister'...and "illusion of Depth" as well as Wand'ring
> Heart and all those 'sliding Mortises'. ...
> 
> [ if I remember aright, in a letter when young to an earnest scholar
> trying to figure out Pynchon's meanings re entropy, etc. he said, it
> [meaning] was all there on the surface. In Slow Learner he wrote of
> using that concept [entropy] but when he learned more about it, he
> couldn't understand it anymore. I have interpreted his 'on the
> surface' remark as a way to say, read the text, it's all there, follow
> the language, think through the metaphors and you will 'get' my books.
> 
> Yet, there's more, there's more, always more there.
> 
> On the surface, just like any great writer who is not a novelist of
> ideas, yet the 'sliding Mortises' line shows his layering on.layering
> in, of meanings. Lasagna novels in lyrical poetry form.
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

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