although this table was firmly set at £1000 no offers .by the seller .
Our Scottish buyer then instructed Geoff at GCL billiards to collect deliver and set back up in Peebels Scotland .
This is the story of an early Mawson billiards table being relocated to a village just outside Peebles in Scotland , a two day job was the schedule to relocate the table which had to come downstairs and then back upstairs .
This was not so bad as it had very thin slates and did not weigh that much .
an ideal table for upstairs location .
we set out on the 28th of January to Sheffield to pick the table up and load it Blanket wrapped onto our van .
Then it was off to Scotland .
We made our way through the Scottish borders to arrive at our clients home around 2pm , just in time for a well deserved coffee and unload of frame and set up , ready for some extra guys to help get the slates upstairs .
our client had arranged for 3 more guys to come along to help lift the slate upstairs and onto the pre leveled frame .
Note the very thin slates , this is the thinnest slate I have seen on a table of this size of 9ft .
We then made good time in fitting the bed cloth on and also the cushions by 6pm
You may note that this Mawson table which is circa 1880 to 1895 has some very nice Mahogany figured wood veneer , especially the flat side and end frame parts , the center leg having a butterfly book matched veneer pattern each side of the leg matching like opening a book and getting the mirror image in reverse so to speak .
This veneer is called book matched veneer
some very nice flame mahogany was chosen for this table making it an high end piece of furniture when it was manufactured circa 1880 to 1895
The veneer was very high class work of art , and the flame mahogany ran all around the frame work and into the ends .
The table had a few indications to it’s age , one is the top plates that have fingers of brass each side of the pocket leathers , these where faded out from 1895 and by the end of 1899 they had disappeared from most billiard tables fittings and the concealed fixed plates started to appear from 1895 .
many people say this is what the difference between a billiards and snooker is , but in fact all tables are billiard tables and that snooker is a game that you play on a billiard table .
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SNOOKER TABLE
A phrase that has been passed down from billiard fitter to fitter .
you can pretty much say any billiard tables with finger of brass top plates where made before 1895
On one cushion there was fixed a label that had a date of 1893, this maybe a re-rubber or modern rubber fitting label , as some rubber around that time was of different profiles , once a billiard firm had produced a better profile of rubber the other firms copied it , in these times of the 1890s they had thin layers of rubber cemented on top of each other much like laminating , the one piece L shape rubber became the norm around this time as the new modification to have and many tables had to have new blocks and rubber fitted to bring up to date .
most tables where modified by late 1910 as the modern cushions where produced , this is why you see so many re-rubber names like the speedy reliable cushion or the arrowflite cushions as swift as an arrow .
the firm i used to work for called there re-rubbered cushion the Empire Match cushion as can be seen from my photo of an old Elston & hopkin plate this is circa 1938 .
But this paper 1893 label could be the Exact date the table was manufactured being just a couple of years before those top plates where discontinued by the majority of firms .
and with a table number of 1275 this could be how many tables they had produced up to that date .
In fact by this time all rubber was made by a handful of firms but the most popular and still is today is the northern rubber companies product made in Retford Nottinghamshire .
by the 1980s it was deemed not lawful by the trades description act to carry on naming cushions if they where all using the same rubber so they stopped calling the cushions a personal named type .
the trade description act also stopped the weight in ounces being stamped on cues too .
and they replaced it with L / M/ H due to drying out and weights not being correct at time of sale .
a fact not a lot of people know about .
We stayed overnight at an Hotel ( The Park ) in Peebles and our client paid for our stay over with meals and left us £20 for a drink behind the bar ( very nice of him ) we then returned to our clients home to check the level again and yes it had sunk a very slight amount into the carpet on two legs .
a quick re-level and another cup of coffee and we had a very satisfied client who was delighted with the Mawson billiard table and with our work to relocate it for him .
I am not sure if it is the tourist board or Northumberland district council who is responsible for the maintenance of the border signs and flags on the English side , but who ever it is they had better buck up their ideas , this sets an example of them not caring
