“It is of no use to design furniture; it cannot be designed.”
— Kaare Klint, Mobilia Magazine, No. 56, 1960
As a teacher especially, Kaare Klint exerted a strong influence. With his students, he studied how a piece of furniture was to function and took anthropometric measurements. As a design theorist, Kaare Klint looked back to the crafts tradition and skilled craftsmanship, for which meticulous attention to detail and a knowledge of materials were essential. This was the basis on which new forms were to be created from existing forms that had proved their worth, not a radical break with tradition but rather an evolution.
So good. The table and the quote, that is.
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Dovetails?
Jennie
Yup. Sliding dovetails without shoulders.
Hi Chris,
I was watching the last episode of Wolf Hall a BBC period piece the other day. The scene where they come to take Ann Bolyn away. You should check out the table she is sitting at. I immediately thought of you when I saw it.
Cheers
Franky
I tried to take a picture of that – and almost all the furniture shown on that series is awesome (and, I think, period correct).
The attention to detail on that show was amazing. Knowing the Poms it was probably an original.
Do you know if the legs go all the way through the top in this version?
Thanks, Rob
They do not.
So what’s the advantage of attaching the legs to rails and not directly to the top? Is the idea to make the table portable or at least easy to take out and put away and not take up a lot of room? If so, it’s very clever–though a lot of work, I imagine, to make those sliding dovetails, and get them right.
Richard,
If the mortises are only in the cross-battens, you side-step wood-movement problems. It is a clever monkey technique.
If the legs were directly mortised into the top without battens, there would be no wood movement problems. But for the same strength, the top would need to be thicker. This design is efficient.
Is the top one large slab or several boards to make up the width?
It’s either two boards or one board that has split – can’t tell.
No glue needed and every component can be easily replaced.
Truly the historical roots of Ikea.
How sturdy is this table? It seems to me that stretchers of some type would go a long way to keeping the table intact were someone to sit(!) on it.
I have built several staked tables like this and find them to be incredibly sturdy. I’d sit on it.
Stretchers just add more joints that can fail, and also add tension to the joinery where there is no need. In this case the only stress on the legs is compression.
Hi Chris, do you know any of the dimensions and can you tell us any of the history of this table, i.e. uses, demographics of users, nationality, etc.? Thanks, love your blog and your A.T.C. book!
It’s about 26″ x 26″ x 50″. Scandinavian. Probably a worktable, judging from the scars on the top. But that’s about all we know.