Barcelona designer Martin Azua has created a table that plays on the contrast in properties between wood and stone (+ slideshow).
The Trees and Rocks table features central discs of Venato Carrara marble set into a main frame of Spanish walnut, but future versions may feature different combinations of material.
“I wanted to make a table with two fine materials that are very attractive in themselves and don’t need any kind of ornamentation because their surface are always different and full of information,” said Azua. “The wood is warm and soft and the marble is cold and tough.”
The marble also serves a practical function, creating a heat- and scratch-resistant section on the surface of the table.
Azua’s latest creation is part of his Numbered collection, which features products created in collaboration with local craftsmen using local materials.
Each piece is designed to incorporate elements that can evolve and change naturally with time and use.
British furniture brand Vitsœ has relaunched an injection-moulded plastic table originally designed by German industrial designer Dieter Rams in 1962.
The 621 Side Table was designed to showcase the practical and aesthetic properties of plastic.
The 621 Side Table next to the Rams’ 620 Chair Programme that was also relaunched by Vitsoe in May last year
Rams regularly promoted the use of plastic in his products for Vitsœ and electronics brand Braun, and described it as a “noble and long-living material.”
Having been out of production since the 1980s, the table is manufactured by injection-moulding plastic into a form that gives it inherent structural rigidity.
Two sizes are being produced, which can be purchased separately or combined as a nested pair.
The tables are available in off-white or black with surfaces hand-painted to give them a textured surface that provides durability and anti-static properties.
Rams has added adjustable feet to the new versions, which enable the product to perform better when used on uneven surfaces.
It can also be turned on its side so one end slides under a chair or sofa and the other becomes the table surface.
Vitsœ continues to build on its exclusive worldwide licence for Dieter Rams’s original furniture designs by adding the 621 Side Table to its growing furniture collection. The table – injection-moulded in Britain – will be available from March 2014.
The table was originally designed by Rams in 1962 along with his 620 Chair Programme. It was last produced in the 1980s and is typical of Rams’s constant quest – at Braun and Vitsœ – to elevate plastic, as he has said, to a “noble and long-living material.”
The detailed form of the table is quintessential Rams and has been displayed in museums worldwide, often in its innovative Rams-designed packaging. The table is hand-painted with a distinctive textured finish to give both durability and an anti-static surface.
Available in two sizes and two colours (black and off-white), the table can be turned on its end to slide over a sofa. Its simple modular design allows it to sit alone or be combined as a group to satisfy a surprising range of uses in the home or office. Not only a side table, coffee table or bedside table, it is excellent as the there-when-needed table.
In addition, the table is now delivered with adjustable feet which have been designed by Rams to realise his original desire that uneven surfaces should be overcome easily.
The competitive price and worldwide online availability directly from Vitsœ ensure that more people will be able to embrace Vitsœ’s ethos of living better, with less, that lasts longer.
Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka will present a reflective glass table for Italian design brand Glas Italia in Milan next month.
Yoshioka‘s Prism Mirror Table for Glas Italia uses a high-transparency mirrored glass that covers the surfaces of the table to reflect its surroundings.
“This piece will be a table like a shimmering sculpture reflecting the view of surroundings,” said Yoshioka. The table is made up of a long rectangular top with bevelled edges, with mirrored blocks for legs.
The panels of glass were cut in a way that allows the edges of the table to refract light like a prism.
Visible brush strokes pattern the surfaces of this furniture collection by Japanese studio Nendo for Italian brand Glasitalia (+ slideshow).
Nendo’s boxy Brushstroke tables and seats for Glasitalia are formed from rectangular sheets of glass, which are decorated with streaked colours created by dragging layers of paint across the material.
“We brushed colour onto the transparent glass surface, then blew another layer of coloured paint on top,” said the designers.
Scraped across in one direction, the resulting effect resembles the texture of wood grain.
“The tense perfection of glass’ glossiness and smoothness fuses with handwork’s imperfect texture to create an unusual material,” added the designers.
The eight-piece set includes a side table, console, bench and dining table, and the top of each design overhangs its base.
A range of blue, grey and beige hues have been used for the different designs.
The collection will be shown in Milan in April, at both the Salone Internazionale del Mobile and Nendo’s solo exhibition taking place at Via delle Erbe 2.
A continuous ribbon of steel forms two legs of this simple table by French designer Eric Jourdan.
Two of the four legs supporting Eric Jourdan‘s Gilda table are created from one strip of thin steel, connecting them along the ground.
The other two legs are angled outward slightly to help the table balance. All the base elements are coated with epoxy resin.
“Gilda is a simple and basic table, with a very assertive character,” said Jourdan. “A tricky exercise, since basics have no room for a glut of features.”
Made from ash or lacquered okoumé wood, the circular top has a slight lip around its bottom edge.
“After having constructed the table around a modern base, I sought to tackle the table top – to be more precise, its border – in a virtually traditional way with an outline that readily reflects the world of traditional cabinet making,” Jourdan said.
The table is produced by young French brand Super-ette. Photographs are by Felipe Ribon.
This collapsible table by Berlin-based designer Jakob Timpe is made from nine pieces of wood that simply slot together with no screws, glue or tools (+ slideshow).
Frustrated by having to handle a large drawing table every time the designer moved, Timpe created an easy-to-assemble trestle-style frame that can be taken apart in seconds and flat-packed for easy storage.
The underframe of the STAND table consists of four horizontal bars that pierce right through slots in the tops of the four legs. The structure is jammed together when pressure is applied by the weight of a tabletop.
“The appearance can be determined by sliding the legs along the frame,” said the designer. “The table permits the legs to protrude from under the top or to disappear beneath it.”
The basic STAND comes without a surface, but the designer has produced a white table top made of particle board and coated with melamin resin available.
The kit weighs just 7.5 kilograms and can support a table top between 170 by 80 centimetres and 240 by 100 centimetres.
To transport the pieces, the STAND comes with a sewn cotton case inspired by brush bags used for the storage of art supplies.
“It works as a wooden dining table, as constructional working table or as a conference table which can be set up and taken down in seconds,” explained Timpe.
The trestle is made in Berlin from solid ash sourced from local forests. Each piece has not been surface treated to emphasise the natural variation in grain and colour in the wood.
“Over time, the wood will take on a natural patina,” said Timpe. However, there is also a white stain finish option available.
The table is available through the young Berlin-based design brand vondingen.
Japanese studio Nendo has dressed up these wooden tables for Walt Disney Japan to look like characters from children’s story books Winnie-the-Pooh.
Nendo created colourful knitted covers for the Pooh Table collection of maple wood furniture so the designs represent the famous yellow bear and his companions.
“To reflect the stories’ setting in the Hundred Acre Wood, the tables use natural-feel maple extensively, and come in sizes and silhouettes intended to recall the stories’ characters,” said Nendo.
The largest table has a red knit covering a shelf beneath it’s top, similar to the sweater worn by Winnie the Pooh.
His close friend Piglet is depicted as a three-legged side table wearing a purple sleeve across most of its top.
Forlorn donkey Eeyore is channelled through a table with a surface that droops to the floor, dressed in grey fabric.
Bouncy tiger Tigger’s orange tail is mimicked by a table’s stand, which extends down past where it branches into three legs.
A design with surfaces at two heights looks like kanagroo mother-and-son pair Kanga and Roo, while Rabbit is identified by knitted socks on two legs of another table in the collection.
The Winnie the Pooh stories were written by AA Milne in the 1920s for his son Christopher Robin, who also features in the tales.
The stories were commercialised by American producer Stephen Slesinger in the 1930s, when the cartoon characters we recognise today were first created.
Following his death, the rights to the Winnie-the-Pooh franchise were licensed to animation studio Walt Disney Productions in 1961.
Nendo created this series for Disney‘s Japanese branch, which has one of its Disneyland resorts in Tokyo.
Part of the table’s circular top is folded upward so it rests flush against a vertical surface. This means that the Yeh Wall Table only requires two legs to stand up.
“The inspiration came from a cheerleader practice I passed by one day on my way to work,” said Yeh. “Two students were rehearsing strength and balance.”
“The male student was in sitting position up against a wall – but without a chair – and the female student was standing on his thighs,” he explained. “The table mimics the position of the male student, back resting on the wall and two legs angled away from the wall for stability.”
Powder-coated steel is used for the surface and thin tubular steel forms the legs.
Kenyon Yeh released the prototype for the side table in 2013, when it was called Kaki.
Swedish design studio Claesson Koivisto Rune will present a modular table system with plug sockets within the structure during Stockholm Design Week next month (+ slideshow).
Designed for Swedish furniture brand Offecct, the Xtra Large table can be extended to create a giant workspace. Claesson Koivisto Rune designed the system so a single piece of furniture could be used to create a flexible office space.
The table can be expanded over time and once it gets to certain size it can be used by employees working independently at one end while a meeting is held at the other.
“We wanted to create a hybrid between a meeting table and a writing desk; a table big enough to work undisturbed with your laptop but still be able to start up a conversation with someone sitting opposite,” said studio co-founder Eero Koivisto. “Even if there is a meeting taking place at the far end of the table.”
The table surface of each module is held up by two chunky cylindrical legs and braced by a square beam, which contains power sockets at each end. Electric wiring runs through the beams and down through the legs to keep the workspace free of cables.
“We have maximised a regular table with all the functions demanded in a modern office today,” said Koivisto. “You could say that this table is the equivalent of a Hercules aeroplane.”
Cologne 2014: a grid of thin wooden strips supports the surface of this table by German designer Ruben Beckers to make it extremely lightweight (+ slideshow).
Ruben Beckers named his 4.5-kilogram poplar wood table kleinergleich5, which means “less than five”.
“It is safe to assume that at just 4.5 kilograms, it is probably the lightest wooden table in the world,” he said.
Beckers employed a grid of extremely thin strips to create a rigid structure beneath the slender table top, so it could support objects placed on top.
The lengths of wood slot together at five-centimetre intervals to create the lattice, which is 28 millimetres deep.
Removable solid-wood legs are bent into the holes in the grid to connect them with the table top.
The table was designed during the Wood*Transformation project at Kassel School of Art and Design, and is currently on display as part of the [D3] Design Talents exhibition at imm cologne.
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