Coffee Tables
by Elena
Welcome to the Coffee Table Guide. I hope to provide you your single most comprehensive resource on all matters relating to coffee tables, from selecting the perfect coffee table for your situation, to finding the best deals on coffee tables online to understanding the role of this versatile piece of furniture in the modern household and how it came to be.
What Is A Coffee Table?
Glass Coffee Tables to Wood Coffee Tables, Round to Square Coffee Table
The History of the Coffee Table
Coffee Tables Today
What Is A Coffee Table?
While some call it a cocktail table, the coffee table is the more established name for the low, long furniture piece set before the sofa to provide easy access to hot and cold drinks. Modern coffee tables have come to be the resting place for more than just coffee, however, with coasters, magazines, plants and perhaps most famously coffee table books finding their place atop a coffee table. These contemporary coffee tables have also begun to incorporate storage through small cabinets or drawers.
You’ll find coffee tables everywhere from the living room, family room or sitting room to the recreation room or home entertainment center.
While furniture trends come and go, the coffee table doesn’t ever seem to go out of style. Whether because it provides the perfect complement to the living room sofa or because it represents versatile and practical function, you’ll always find a way to fit a coffee table into your home.
Glass Coffee Tables to Wood Coffee Tables, Round to Square Coffee Table
One reason they are so common and so timeless is that today coffee tables come in all shapes, sizes, materials and sizes. Whether you seek a wood coffee table to match the oak of a traditional living room or a glass coffee table to match your modern minimalism, you’ll find a style and material to match your needs. While some still prefer the rustic coffee table (which is usually wooden), others have come to love the elegant balance and modern aesthetic of the naguchi coffee table, a glass coffee table with a single glass piece for the top and two balanced pieces creating a tripod stance.
Others still may prefer pure functionality, going with a lift top coffee table so that one can prepare the table in the kitchen and place the top directly on its frame with ease. While lift top coffee tables were once heavy and unwieldy, modern designs provide light and easy-to-use tops for even the tightest budgets.
The History of the Coffee Table
The basic concept of a low table designed for the primary purpose of presenting hot beverages or setting down your cup between sip existed well before historical references to a coffee table in European designs. From claw and pillar tripod tables in India to low square tea tables in China, the basic functionality we find so versatile and appealing today has existed for centuries across the world.
The first references to modern coffee tables appears to have occurred in the latter Victorian era when a table created by E.W. Godwin was manufactured and sold in large quantities by William Watt, Collinson and Lock. This particular table was actually described as a coffee table, and references to it as such exists within furniture literature occur in such reputable sources as R. W. Symonds and B. B. Whineray’s Victorian Furniture as well as in Edward T. Joy’s The Country Life Book of English Furniture.
However, other historical data indicates that this table would have been a little high by modern expectations for such coffee tables, so we’re really not sure.
The history of this ubiquitous cocktail table becomes even more obscured in the late 19th century with the popularity of revivalism. In 1938, Joseph Aronson perhaps encapsulated and defined the table’s name forever after when he wrote that a coffee table was a “low wide table now used before a sofa or couch.”
Coffee Tables Today
Today you might say consumerism has taken reign, with all manner of style and material thriving. Revivalism has certainly not disappeared, as even in the seventies Art Deco revivalism manifested itself and left a permanent influence in the furniture industry. It appears that modernism and revivalism are not destined to coexist with different personalities being drawn to different aesthetic ideals.
You even see coffee tables penetrating the casual food industry with companies such as Starbucks utilizing coffee tables in their decor to help provide a warm, comfortable environment for their customers to enjoy their latest caffeine creation.
You certainly shouldn’t be at a loss for choices, with the mass production of a wide range of styles and materials being available everywhere, from online auction sites to your local thrift store, from upscale furniture boutiques to local discount retailers like Wal-Mart. Whatever your budget and whatever your requirement, be it functional or ornamental, it shouldn’t take long for your to find a small coffee table or large coffee tables to fit your specific needs.