Thomas Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1754, provided 'China Table' patterns in lieu of the trays-on-stands that previously displayed Chinese porcelain tea-services in fashionable bedroom-apartments. Conceived in the fancifully mixed styles appropriate for these apartments, the richly fretted tea-table, with its trellised tray-rim and scalloped apron, has Chinese rail ribbon-guilloche in its frame as well as the cusped panels of its pilaster legs, whose cut-angled interiors also incorporate 'Gothic' aperatures. It relates in particular to stands in Chippendale's 'China Case' patterns (op. cit., pls. CV and CVIII). Certain features also appear in card-table patterns illustrated in Messrs. Ince & Mayhew's, Universal System of Household Furniture, 1762, pl. LII