While debugging the properties loading mechanism I noticed that the properties are being loaded each time a table is being rendered.
Don't think this is a desirable situation and not necessary. In a multi-user environment with many tables this would cause additional server IO for settings that don't change after the application is started.
Can be reproduced using the jmesa live demos. Set a breakpoint on properties.load(...) in PropertiesPreferences. It is being called by in the TableFacade getPreferences() method and preferences here always seem to be null.