A BEAUTIFUL THING

These tables don’t need coasters

COFFEE TABLES AREN’T FOR COFFEE. Not anymore. They’re not even really for coffee-table books. In living rooms around the world, the coffee table has become the centre of the familial universe. It’s the kitchen island of the 2000-teens. The place where homework is done, where the bowl of popcorn sits on movie night, where feet are put up, where drinks are spilt.

“I really like the danger,” says Yuki Kawae. He refers not to the danger that a coffee table might get wrecked, but rather to the way he makes his: using a Husqvarna chainsaw. “You could cut your feet off. Or your finger. That makes the material speak more. Because if I cut it this way, then the chainsaw will fire back at me. That’s the wood telling me what I can do. It’s a conversation.”

Kawae, 28, is a graduate of the vaunted Rhode Island School of Design, where they talk about things like having a conversation with wood. Working out of the Artisan’s Asylum maker space near his home, he turns salvaged timber into tables. He keeps the wood looking fairly raw, relying only on the 9 000-r/min engine in the chainsaw, some 120-grit Diablo sandpaper, and a bit of walnut oil or wipe-on polyurethane. The result is something that looks better the more you live with it. Like a nick on the banister, or the pencilled marks on the doorjamb showing your kid’s height, every scuff, little dent and halo created by condensation on the bottom of a glass renders a Yuki Kawae coffee table less an inanimate piece of furniture and more a part of your life. – SE A N MANNING