It appears from your post that you & i would have very different esthetics afa table design.
However, given the classic references: i am impressed with the Porter work you link, but not really with the trueness of their somewhat “mashed up” allusions to classic design names.
Since you ask, something true to Duncan Phyfe’s late work: perfect massing of clean forms, line, and shadow covered completely in matched crotch and burl mahogany. Phyfe was not necessarily devoid of carving or detail ornamentation, but fundamentally the shapes created the impression & carried it with grace & elegance.
If you like ornamentation & inlay (marquetry/parquetry) none ever did it better than Herter Bros. Lyrical, magical inlays & pattern composition. Unfortunately, they worked during a period when the expected shapes of furniture was not only clunky, but overwrought in applied detail.
going back to the previous century, just before the Terror hit France, i’ve sometimes tried to imagine what Marie‘s or Catherine the great’s table would have looked like if they had commissioned it from David Roentgen along with all the other furniture they bought from him. Something clean, though - along the lines of his Ben Franklin works tall clock. Though you might appreciate one with refernces to, say, the Apollo desk with ormolu mounts & all. And a few secret compartments.....
Personally, the mystery that nags at me from time to time is “how would E. J. have resolved the billiards table question?”
There is a travesty you can find by googling that pretends to being Ruhlmann inspired; it is barely a half baked assemblage of generic forms plopped together on a vaguely ruhlmanesque base. Emile himself would certainly have done it better & even your wife or mistress would be faint with desire until you acquired it.
Which gets back to the fact that when function is of essence, it is really difficult to exceed a Brunswick Anniversary or Centennial and do it with elegance. Or some of the cleaner massive turn of the last century BBC’s that were rare at the time and seldom if ever seen again. A couple decades later BBC also published a catalog during the mid 1920’s that showed perhaps 10 or a dozen custom tables they had built for people lik3 Andrew Carnegie et al.
good luck!
it does sound like fun.
smt
