Chess might be the original game of kings, but you could be playing pool on the table of kings if you've got a wad of money to drop at this week's UAE Interiors trade show, which introduces the products of interior designers, manufacturers and suppliers from around the world to the Middle East. At the show, Chevillotte, the Orléans-based pool table specialist, has launched a limited-edition replica of the French king Louis XVI's billiards table, handcrafted from the same materials as the replica they made at the request of the Palace of Versailles.
When the conservators at the palace, the French royal family's home until the Revolution of 1789, decided to recreate Louis XVI's billiards table, Chevillotte was the only manufacturer seen as capable of doing the project justice. Since 1860, the company has been making new tables and restoring antique ones, and the quality of workmanship is legendary among those who know about such things. The fact that theirs is the first piece of furniture in the Palace of Versailles to be a replica rather than a restored original is a serious testament to their standing among furniture buffs.
Christophe Chevillotte, the vice president of the family firm, explains: "We were chosen by the minister of culture in France to be the first furniture in Versailles that is non-restored. They agreed that it would be impossible to find an original and that we had real know-how. And they wanted to make it more open for the public, so that they could see a period room with a period piece in it." Creating the table was no small undertaking - especially as there was no original to work from. "We worked for about one year with the general curator at that time, from drawings, from invoices dating to 1776, from paintings, so that we could agree on what this table would have been like - actually, it was more research than production, because once we agreed on the design, it took only five months to make. What took time is that we had to remake some tools that do not exist any more, screw dimensions that did not exist any more, for example. But it's quite a basic table, I would say: it's not what his wife, Marie-Antoinette, would have chosen. She would certainly have gone for something more opulent. The king chose just a regular table: plain, solid oak, the purest oak that has been tried for more than four years."
It's not all plain and simple though: the legs are beautifully turned, the fittings gold-leafed and there is more than a kilometre of gold-laced thread between the 956 golden nails. And while the original table was a different size to the standard modern table, designed for a different game technique, the replica, of which only 50 will be made, is conceived as a table of high enough specification to be used under international competition conditions.
"The original table is a little longer than a regular table. It's just over four metres by two. And of course you had no slate at that time, so it's an oak plank; and there was no rubber, so you had maybe 30 layers of wool in the cushions. The rebound was not good at all - the game was very different then. But the idea of the edition is to follow exactly the same aesthetic features but to change almost every technical feature so it looks exactly the same as in Versailles - same oak, same golden nails, the same parts, except that in Versailles it has 15 legs and this has 12; but it's a regular nine-foot US pool competition size. It has slate, it has rubber, it plays very well, very fast, with the correct rebound. The techniques and the way of assembling the legs to the frame and the frame to the slate is what we do to any regular table today in our production. So technically it is modern, but aesthetically it is the same as Versailles."
Launching the table in Abu Dhabi is, in fact, a prelude to Chevillotte's projected showroom in the UAE. Of the 50 numbered editions, "zero" is the one that will be on show at Interiors UAE - and it won't be for sale, remaining instead on display, when the company has found an appropriate place. The asking price of ?40,000 (Dh195,000) seems a small price to pay for the royal stamp of approval on your table, and the first six tables are expected to be made before May (though the first five and number 32 have been sold). Rather than being numbered in the order the tables are sold, the purchasers are able to choose their number from those available.
Interiors UAE continues at the Abu Dhabi Exhibition Centre until tomorrow.
