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| Volume 2, Number 4 |
October 2009 |
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| It's been an entire season since our last report, time enough to think carefully about tables. We have made a great many over the years, both plain and fancy. This summer we made just one, deliberately. What table, we asked, can we make that is handsome, sturdy, readily shipped, easily assembled, and inexpensive? We call our answer the Times Table, made to furnish life in a crippled economy, a time in our national (global!) life when the value of things that are simple and good needs to be reaffirmed. |
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The Times Table
The Times Table is that rare project that looked at rest the moment it stood up. There were no changes to make. We lived with it for a month or so without once walking by and thinking, Nope: just a little more (or less) here (or there). It just kept looking right: the legs, with their slight taper well out at the corners, and the tusk tenon tucked right under the top, its mild angle an increase over the barely perceptible angle of the inside leg face complemented by the beveled end of the apron tenon and the chamfered top. These angles anchor the corners, and give way to a simple expanse of hand-planed pine on top.
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Shop Talk
The Times Table is 66" long and 32" wide, room for six people at dinner, or for one person, using the table as a desk, to spread out lots of paper. The top is hand-planed eastern white pine, a utilitarian staple that ages with grace, wearing its private history of dings and scratches with pride as its natural color warms and deepens with time. The base is tulip, of moderate density, strong and light. The wedges in the tusk tenon joint are quartersawn white oak, for its high density and dimensional stability. The wedges are cut flush to the underside of the top, which helps to hold them tightly in place. Machine screws with inserts and table fasteners secure top firmly to base. In combination with the tusk tenon joint, this construction allows the table to be assembled easily using a hammer and screw driver, and repeatedly taken apart and reassembled without going all wobbly. It knocks down into top, leg-and-apron ends permanently mortised together, long aprons, and tusk-tenon wedges, plus screws and fasteners.
We sell the Times Table unfinished for $650, plus $25 for packing ready to ship. UPS can take one from our shop in Massachusetts to California for less than $150.
Too bare-bones for you? We can always make a different size, add color and finish to your specs, even use a premium wood - all for a price, of course. We're always glad to talk.
But while a case can be made that a fine design deserves rare material and a lustrous finish, the original idea was to make a minimal table without sacrificing what we value most: pleasing shape, long-lasting utility, the look and feel of wood, craftsmanship. With a Times Table, your hands come to rest on a surface smoothed by hand-held edge tools skillfully used. You can take the thing apart and put it back together, scrub it clean and wipe it dry with no worries. Go ahead, use this table! It will stand up to your use a long time, adding a new layer of warmth every year.
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Ordering
A deposit of $325, by check to New England Modern, PO Box 324, Monterey, MA 01245 will put your Times Table on our schedule. When we notify you of completion, about a month later, you can send the balance and receive your table shortly thereafter. Or pick it up yourself at our shop, 53 Harmon Road in Monterey. We'd love to see you. If you prefer a custom version, let's talk. We're at 413-528-9937.
The Times Table is the product of a far more satisfying equation than the most lucrative credit default swap, and a lot less costly, by every measure.
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