Coffee Tables
ORIG.: The UK
The first coffee house to opened in Oxford, UK in 1650 by a Jew called Jacob, followed by the opening of the first coffee house in London in 1652 by Pasqua Rosee, a native of Turkey. They were known as Penny Universities because they cost a penny to enter and included a free coffee. Coffee houses were meeting places for businessmen, merchants, scholars, politicians and the like – and it was thought that you could learn as much in a Penny University as you could in a real one.
By 1750, tea drinking was the fashion, and there was an increasing demand for tea tables. The first tables specifically called coffee tables arrived in the Victorian era. There is a table designed by E.W. Godwin in 1868 and made in large numbers by William Watt and Collinson and Lock which is listed as a coffee table in ‘Victorian Furniture’ by R. W. Symonds & B. B. Whineray and also in ‘The Country Life book of English Furniture’ by Edward T. Joy. It is notable that it was not a low table at all, but about 27 inches high. E. W. Godwin’s influence can be seen in the furniture of the Arts and Crafts Movement, but as Arts and Crafts furniture generally favoured an emphasis on the vertical components it was to be some time before a low coffee table came into being. In later years, Japanese design gained influence and Art Nouveau furniture began to influence today’s low height coffee table form.
As for the present time, as is befitting in this century where consumer choice is King, there now exists a plethora of styles. Revivalism never disappeared during the last century, there was an Art Deco revivalist movement in the 70s for instance, and it seems that the conflict between revivalism and modernism will never be resolved. Just as some people will always prefer to live in a period property and some in a modern apartment, some consumers prefer traditional styles and some prefer modern styles of coffee tables.
Two particular modern day manufacturers stand out for their quality of design and craftsmanship. The Danish company Naver make very fine modern coffee tables in the tradition of some of the very best modern Danish furniture designers of the 1930s-1970s. Multi-design award winning Team7, from Austria, combine high engineering, craftsmanship with design to produce innovative forms like the height adjustable Lift table, and the beautifully formed Stern coffee table with alternately rising falling supports.
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