Depends on what your chairs are and what your room looks like, which one YOU like and what you can afford.
Are you confusing the Antiques forum with the decorating forum?
Linda C

The chairs are chippendale. I much prefer antiques, and so I asked on this forum where like minded people hang out...wondering if those of you who adore antiques would even consider a dining room table with that high shine...and flame design...and the banded edge. Or if you thought the plainer the table...the more authentic the look.

Post pictures of the chairs and tables please.

Can't figure out how to show pix. The URL below has some beautiful, CHippendale Formal Dining Room Tables.

Here is a link that might be useful: Formal Dining Room Tables

I would go with plain instead of scallops--and I don't care for high shine in the finish--but this is just me.

High shine would be historically correct for that type of table

I don't think high shine is necessarily always historically correct for a formal dining table. To me, high shine is more likely to say big box furniture store--inexpensive reproduction. I would still go with a matte finish--and something simple. Go through some decorating magazine (maybe Traditional Home) and see what others are choosing--and what you really like.

(I have a formal mahogany dining table from Baker. It is also banded in a slightly lighter shade. It has a matt finish--and I love it. While it is very formal, it can be dressed up and down and I think this is due to the fact that it doesn't have that shiny finish.)

High shine is always historically correct for 18t century and early 19 century furniture formal furniture.
I don't mean like un rubbed laquer high shine but like varnish well rubbed with pumice and oil and a bare hand.
may I suggest a museum like perhaps The Philadelphia Museum of Art or Winterthur or Colonial Williamsburgh as examples.
Somehow in the 60's people started buying matte finishes...perhaps because they didn't show scratches and imperfections.
Lidna C

Matte finishes are easier and cheaper to apply (they're more forgiving of slight imperfections) so there was and is more of them being shown in mid-to-low end furniture lines.

Annie

My table is quite high end and has the matte finish---and looks much more like an antique table than the same table with the shiny finish. It is banded mahogany and the finish looks hand rubbed. There are vast differences between furniture companies. A Baker dining table is nothing like a Basset--for example To my eye the hand rubbed look is more pleasing--but I realize some like the shiny finish. I see very few antiques with a very shiny finish.

I'm afraid I give the nod to Lindac on the question of what is the historically correct finish for the sorts of tables being discussed here. In my area there are several extremely high end antiques shops and careful scrutiny of their wares from that time period clearly shows the preference for glossier finishes. Below is one table with the sort of base bnice. mentioned, look carefully at the others representative of high style and the glossy finish is clearly discernable.

It has nothing to do with price paid for a newly constructed piece or its relative quality, Susie., it's about the preferred aesthetic at the time the originals were made. Matte finishes are the present vogue, but were not the historic one for pieces of such high style.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Ma. has a fine collection of 18th. and 19th. century furniture, as does the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Ma.. I thoroughly enjoyed the Colonial Williamsburg Museum, Lindac (loved the folk art museum, too!).

Here is a link that might be useful: Jorgensen Antiques

I think we may be talking about the same thing here. I looked at the Jorgensen Antiques table--and the finish look much like the finish on my Baker formal dining table that I call matt. It is lovely. It is not nearly as shiny as tables I have seen. The antique looks hand rubbed--just like my dining table. Yes, I have seen antiques like the one pictured--and my table looks a lot like that--even in its styling.