Making tables part of the family
Trend away from surfaces that look new, to ones that look lived with
If there is a time of year when people feel the need to switch up their dining table it appears “for Christmas” is a popular deadline, say local furniture and interior designers.
“It’s usually the only time of year where people come to me and say they have family coming in from out of town, or it’s just a natural time of year for them to do a lot of entertaining and generally it’s the dining room but also other main areas in the house on the main floor that they want to have spruced up in time for the holidays,” says Anna Dhillon of Anna Dhillon Design.
The importance of the traditional formal dining room has diminished, says Dhillon.
Her clients prioritize designing the family room and breakfast room first.
“They’re recognizing that those are the rooms that you’re using regularly,” she says.
For breakfast tables, Dhillon says, she does all kinds of things. Last year, a client opted for a table at counter height, with the children sitting in high chairs and the adults on stools, so it could also be used as prep surface for the kitchen and be pushed up against the wall to be used as a buffet table for entertaining.
As people are moving into smaller spaces in Vancouver, Dhillon says pieces like this that offer versatility are becoming increasingly popular and it’s not reserved to dining tables.
Lately she’s been doing a lot of upholstered coffee tables with built-in storage.
“Something that I’m doing quite often for people with youngish children — and that’s probably up until about age 11 or 12 — is doing upholstered pieces for coffee tables. So it might be a round cylinder, or it might be a square or it might be a rectangle but it’s fully in leather or indooroutdoor fabric, something that has softness on all sides of it and that works really well because you don’t have to worry about sharp corners or things rolling underneath,” she says.
The materials people are choosing for their table tops is also changing, says Dhillon.
“It used to be in North America that we wanted everything to always look and feel new, whereas in Europe people would put marble on top for the table and not think twice about the rings and nicks on it, the patina — it was considered a beautiful thing. Now I’m finding people are interested in making that sacrifice (here). They’re not necessarily looking for man-made stone but they’re interested in going into real marble to get the look they want and appreciate the natural patina of it,” she says.
Clients are favouring tables that have a story, says furniture designer Romney Shipway of Shipway Design, who recently “included” the family in a custom dining table he built for them.
“There’s four members of the family,” he says. “A mom, dad, son and daughter and I said here, you each take one of these sticks. Live with it for a month, take it to the beach and throw it in the water, stir spaghetti sauce, make it yours. The kids drew on theirs with crazy colours, the mother did some drawings of things she was into and I took those strips and inlaid them into the back of those legs, so it’s like a little surprise.”
Shipway is moving away from the concrete and wood combination found in many of his pieces.
“The No. 1 principle behind my design is sustainability and low impact,” he says. “Going back to pure wood fits my objectives.”
Local furniture designer Nick Purcell says his low, nesting tables have found favour with people who are drawn to his minimalist, Danish-modern and Japanese-inspired design style and multi-functional furniture.
“They can be grouped together in the middle of the room or tuck under each other,” he says. “It gives you two tiers for starters and interrupts that one big plane of wood (that a standard table provides).”