A large centre table with double stretching teak top and drawer fronts with ebony and ivory inlays "Secant circles - «diaprés»", spiral legs and double stretching with centered ivory sissoo inlays, darkened teak «ball» feet Indo-Portuguese 17th C. (2nd half) small restoration, minor faults and defects Dimensões (altura x comprimento x largura) - 81 x 134 x 105 cm Notes: According to family oral tradition, this table was offered by the Archbishop of Goa to the former owner's great-grandfather, a senior official and engineer in the Portuguese State of India, in the mid-to-late 19th century, as a reward for the latter's plans for the renovation of the Goan episcopal palace. The table was reportedly kept in a storage room at the palace. Vd. similar copy, but of normal dimensions, in DIAS, Pedro – "Mobiliário Indo-Português". Moreira de Cónegos: Imaginalis, 2013, p. 196. a) This lot is subject to CITES export/import restrictions and is duly certified: No. 25PTLX03965C b) The import of goods incorporating materials from protected wild fauna and flora species, including, among others, ivory, coral and tortoiseshell, is currently prohibited by several countries; c) In Portugal, in accordance with the planned transposition into national legislation of the most recent EU guidelines on the ivory trade, the issuance of re-export certificates to non-EU countries is suspended; d) In this context, potential buyers are advised to inform themselves in advance about their country's legislation and applicable international restrictions.


This impressive large centre table—known in Portuguese as mesa-bufete— was made in seventeenth-century Portuguese-ruled Goa. Constructed from teak (Tectona grandi), partially veneered in East Indian rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia), and decorated with ebony (Diospyros ebenum) and ivory inlays, it follows a contemporary Portuguese prototype. The table consists of a rectangular top with a flat apron, raised on slightly splayed spiral-turned supports joined by double-tiered stretchers and terminating in ball feet. The tabletop, formed of three broad planks of finely grained teak, is conceived in a carpet-like composition. Its central field is entirely covered with a pattern of interlocking circles—the quintessential Goan diaper motif—framed by a wide border of the same design and edged by a narrow secondary border. The aprons, without drawers as seen in some related examples, are decorated in the same pattern and bordered with rosewood veneers secured by round pegs. The spiral-turned feet and stretchers, assembled with mortise-and-tenon joints reinforced by pegs, are ornamented with inlaid spiralling ebony fillets and dotted ivory-and-ebony inlays. The moulded ball feet, as well as the spherical nodes at the stretcher midpoints, are stained black and ebonised. Intended as the focal point of an aristocratic or patrician interior, such monumental mesas-bufete were used alongside more portable table types common in Portuguese households, such as folding trestle tables. The inlay decoration, employing the interlocking-circle motif with distant origins in the Indian subcontinent, together with the selection of local materials, clearly situates this table within Goan production.
According to family tradition, this unusually large table was presented as a gift by the Archbishop of Goa to the great-grandfather of a former owner, a military engineer stationed in Portuguese India in the late nineteenth century. Research suggests that the recipient was José Frederico d’Assa Castel-Branco (1836-1912), director of Goa’s Public Works Department, who was responsible for the design of the Archbishop’s Palace in Altinho, Panjim (New Goa). Approved in 1887 under Archbishop António Sebastião Valente (1846-1908), the building was erected between 1890 and 1895. Castel-Branco, born in Margão, was appointed Deputy-Director of the Public Works Department in 1879 and Director in 1888, authoring important public buildings in Panjim such as the Post Office, the Meteorological Observatory, and the Public Works Department headquarters.  He also taught at the Military and Mathematics School of Goa, the Professional School of New Goa, and the Lyceum of Goa (1887–1906). Castel-Branco retired as general in 1901 and withdrew from the Public Works Department in 1905. The present table was likely gifted to him by Archbishop Valente around 1890, perhaps in recognition of his architectural services.
The chronology of this gift helps to explain the old restorations visible on the table, including brass fittings and reinforcing wooden slats applied to the underside of the top, probably at the moment when its original drawers were lost. A comparable, though much smaller and earlier, example of this type (86.5 x 132.5 x 97.7 cm), with two drawers, straight legs, and the same interlocking-circle decoration, belongs to the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon (inv. 10 Mov). Another, in a private collection, of even smaller dimensions (65.0 × 69.5 × 47.0 cm), also with drawers, exhibits spiral-turned splayed feet, ebonised ball feet, and spherical stretcher nodes identical to the present table.  Exceptional for its imposing size—tables of this type rarely exceed 150 cm in length—and for the refinement of its spiral-turned supports, the present example is distinguished not only by its craftsmanship but also by its provenance, which situates it at the intersection of Goan artisanal virtuosity and the patronage of the highest ranks of Portuguese colonial society.


1)On this Goan production, see Hugo Miguel Crespo, India in Portugal. A Time of Artistic Confluence (cat.), Porto, Blueboook, 2021, pp. 115-120.
2) See Alice Santiago Faria, Architecture Coloniale Portugaise à Goa. Le Département des Travaux Publics, 1840-1926, Saarbruchen, ‎Presses Académiques Francophones, 2014.
3)  Pedro Dias, Mobiliário Indo-Português, Moreira de Cónegos, Imaginalis, 2013, p. 195.

Hugo Miguel Crespo, August de 2025