Red Porphyry Table

This is a seventeenth-century table with a top of Egyptian red porphyry and a mosaic border of conventional floral design in lapis lazuli, jasper and colored agates. The top is supported by four columns of Egyptian red porphyry with carved and gilded wood Corinthian capitals. The columns rest on an ebony base.

The table was purchased in 1916 from the Sangiorgi Galleries in Rome. The gallery describes it as being “from the Palace of the Marquis Toscanelli de Pisa, Italy, which is [known for its] quality and import of valuable marbles, or better, ‘pietre dure.’ [One] can only finds its equal in museums like the Louvre, the South Kensington, or the Ville Borghese.”

Pietra dura or pietre dure is a term for the inlay technique of using cut and fitted, highly polished colored stones to create images. After they’ve been cut, the stones are glued to a substrate so precisely that the gap between the pieces is almost nonexistent. Stability was achieved by grooving the undersides of the stones so that they interlocked, like a jigsaw puzzle, with everything held in place by a frame. Many kinds of colored stones, particularly marbles, can be used, along with semi-precious and precious stones.

Photography by Kevin Miyazaki.