French Walnut Sewing Table by Vve P Sormani, Paris

• Crossbanding - Crossbanding is a decorative technique used in furniture-making, where thin strips of wood, known as crossbands, are applied to the surface of a piece of furniture to create a decorative border or inlay. The crossbands are typically made of a different type of wood or a different color than the main piece of furniture, and are applied in a geometric pattern, such as a checkerboard or herringbone design.
  
  Crossbanding was a popular decorative technique in furniture-making from the 17th to the 19th centuries, particularly in the Baroque, Rococo, and Chippendale styles. It was often used to create intricate patterns and designs on the surfaces of tables, desks, cabinets, and other pieces of furniture. The crossbands were often made of exotic woods, such as ebony or rosewood, which were imported from other parts of the world and were highly prized for their rich colors and patterns.
• Cross Banding - A decorative veneer, up to about 2 cm wide, laid at right angles to the parallel grain of the main carcase, continuing around the edge of the piece, used around the edges of table tops, drawer fronts, tops of chests and desks, and sometimes on door frames. The cross band may be either in the same or contrasting timber to the carcase and the joint may be sometimes hidden by a line of stringing or herring-bone banding. Cross banding is found on furniture constructed both of solid and veneered timber. Where solid timber is used, a rebate will have to be cut to accommodate the cross band, so that the upper surface of the piece is flush. However, due to the natural shrinkage of timber over the years, the cross banding will have been pushed up in places, and the joint can be felt by the fingertips. If the cross banding is completely flush or even countersunk below the surface of the carcase and shows no other evidence of strain, it may very well have been a more recent addition.
• Foliate - Decorated with leaves or leaf-like forms.
• Inlay - Decorative patterns inserted into the main body of a piece of furniture, generally in wood of contrasting colour and grain, though brass, ivory, ebony, shell and sometimes horn have been used. Inlay may consist of a panel of well figured timber inset into a cabinet door front, geometric patterns, or complex and stylized designs of flowers, swags of foliage, fruits and other motifs. As a general rule, in pieces where the carcase is constructed in the solid, the inlay is relatively simple such as stringing, cross banding and herringbone banding. Where more elaborate and decorative work was required veneer was used. Inlay has been fashionable from at least the latter half of the 17th century, when a variety of elaborate forms were developed
• Fluting - A form of decoration found on many pieces of furniture, as well as ceramics, silver and clocks, in which round-bottomed grooves, of varying width and depth, are let into columns, pilasters, legs. As a general rule, flutes are cut in the vertical, though they may follow a turned leg in a spiral pattern. In cross-section, they may be described as a series of 'U' shapes, rising and narrowing at each end of the groove. Fluting is the opposite of reeding, with which fluting is often associated.
• Tier - One or more under-shelves of a table or cabinet.
• Burr - Burr (or in the USA, burl) is the timber from the knotted roots or deformed branch of the tree, which when cut, displays the small circular knots in various gradations of colour. It is always cut into a decorative veneer, most commonly seen as burr walnut on 19th century furniture.

This item has been included into following indexes:

• tables, French - French, wine and ocasional 558
• tables, purpose or type - sewing and work 362