Flip Top Games Table
A flip top games table brings centuries of ingenious folding surfaces and social entertainment straight into your drawing room.
Flip Top Games Table
When you search for a flip top games table, you find a versatile folding surface designed for card playing, tea drinking, and casual display across the Georgian, Regency, and Victorian periods.
These pieces bridge the gap between practical daily furniture and evening recreation, featuring clever folding, swivel, or concertina actions that reveal hidden baize-lined playing spaces.
How they were made
Cabinet makers utilised dense native and imported timbers, notably solid and figured mahogany, rosewood, and walnut, often accentuating the grain with subtle satinwood inlay or contrasting borders.
Construction relied on precise hinge mechanisms, swivel tops, and concertina actions to support the heavy folding leaf safely when open without straining the timber joints.
Decorative touches included carved pillar bases, scroll pedestals, and occasionally gilded brass mounts or ormolu details that elevated the appearance of the piece for formal reception rooms.
Flip Top Games Table Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical asking prices for flip top games table among the pieces listed under this phrase on Sellingantiques today, from the lower quarter to the upper quarter. They describe what is for sale here now, not the wider market.
Some Victorian card tables hid secret wells beneath the folding top to store ivory counters and decks of cards.
What varies in quality
The distinction between standard examples and superior pieces rests on the choice of timber, where intensely figured flame mahogany, burr walnut, or bird's-eye maple raises the visual merit significantly.
Engineering of the folding mechanism marks a clear divide, with complex concertina actions and smooth swivel joints representing finer workshop standards than simple hinge arrangements.
Carved detail on pedestals and friezes, alongside crisp satinwood inlay, separates mass-produced items from pieces built by skilled cabinet makers.
Epstein and Co·H.OGDEN
The Flip Top Games Table Glossary
- Concertina action
- A table frame that expands outward on an accordion-style folding wooden framework to support the open top equally on all four sides. This clever engineering ensures the weight distributes evenly during card games.
- Demi-lune
- A half-moon shape with a curved front and a flat back designed to sit neatly against a wall when closed. These tables open out into a full circle for use.
- Figured mahogany
- Timber harvested from specific sections of the tree trunk that display mottled, wavy, or flame-like patterns in the grain. Cabinet makers reserved these choice sections for the most prominent surfaces.
- Ormolu
- Gilded bronze applied as decorative mounts or feet on finer Regency and Victorian tables. The metallic lustre contrasts sharply against dark rosewood and mahogany.
- Baize
- A coarse woollen fabric dyed green or red used to line the playing surface of card tables. It provides a soft, grippy texture that keeps cards from sliding.
Flip Top Games Table: Frequently Asked Questions
How did people use a flip top games table?
Families and guests utilised these tables during social evenings for card games, chess, and social conversation.
By day, the folded top served as a side table for tea sets, books, or decorative objects against the drawing room wall.
How do I tell a Georgian table from a Victorian one?
Georgian tables tend to feature restrained elegance, straight or cabriole legs, and understated mahogany or walnut timber.
Victorian pieces often display heavier proportions, elaborate rosewood grain, scroll pedestals, and more robust turnings.
What is a concertina action?
A concertina action is an expanding wooden frame that pulls outward as the table top unfolds.
This provides solid structural support beneath all four corners of the opened leaf rather than relying on a single swinging leg.
Where should I place one in a modern home?
These tables sit particularly well against a hallway or living room wall in their closed position, acting as a console or side table.
When you entertain, pulling them into the centre of the room reveals their original folding purpose and beautiful timber top.