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The Eero Saarinen line of tables are among the most important and iconic in the history of modern design. Everything about them was fresh, orginal, and striking at the time they were first produced. And now, decades later? Everything about them is as fresh, original, and striking as when they were first produced.
The Saarinen tables are elegant, poised, and classic. Wide, round or oval tops with a single, slender pillar holding them up that seems to puddle out into the floor - the tables almost seems like a fountain coming up out of the ground before fanning gently into a perfect sphere (or oval). Over the years Saarinen produced dozens of table models all owing to the same sense of scale, the same general design, and the same inimitable style that he brought to everything he did. The new models would feature different colors, different dimensions, and serve different purposes.
The tops of the largest Saarinen Tables seem impossibly large when you see that they're being supported by just a single column in the center of the piece. The smooth, glass like surface just seems to spread out as far as it can go from the "fountain" in the floor. It's a real engineering accomplishment on the part of Saarinen (one that was anticipated and presaged by Frank Lloyd Wright in the realm of architecture) that something so thin and light as the pillar underneath these tables could support something so occasionally formidable as the top of, say, the 96" Oval Dining Table.
This paradox, of the seemingly slight support structure holding up a standard or even large main structure, was a major through-line in the history of modern and mid-century desing. Cherner, Charles and Ray Eames, Saarinen and more all incorporated it into their designs, and they all produced lasting work using it as a principle. The Saarinen Tables are perhaps the greatest example of this ideological centerpiece in the modern furniture movement.
That's why today at Smart Furniture you can choose between over a dozen models of the Saarinen Tables, each having been preserved over many decades owing to it's continuing popularity, classic status, and gorgeous, never out of style bearing. Get your Saarinen Table today! |
