Card Table 1810 - 1820

This card table, crafted by an anonymous artist, features striking symbols that resonate through time. The lyre motif, prominently displayed, evokes ancient Greece, where it symbolized harmony, reason, and Apollonian ideals. Observe how the lyre motif transitions across centuries. In classical antiquity, it represented intellectual and artistic pursuits. Here, it adorns a common household object, a gaming table, symbolizing the integration of culture into daily life. This motif becomes a ghost, a memory of a cultural ideal embedded in the object's form. The table's clawed feet root it to the earth, grounding the flights of fancy inherent in games of chance. Such symbols reveal the cyclical nature of cultural memory. The lyre, once a beacon of enlightenment, returns in this object, transformed yet still potent, reminding us that the past is never truly gone but constantly resurfaces in altered forms.