WIKIPEDIA

A pine table is a form of furniture composed of a surface supported by a base, usually four legs. It is often used to hold objects or food at a convenient or comfortable height when sitting. Generic pine tables have hinged extensions of the table top called drop leaves, while other pine tables can be extended with removable sections called leaves.

The term "table" is derived from a merger of French table and Old English tabele, ultimately from the Latin word tabula, "a board, plank, flat piece". In Late Latin, tabula took over the meaning previously reserved to mensa (preserved in Spanish mesa "table"). In Old English, the word replaced bord for this meaning.

Pine Tables come in a wide variety of shapes, height, and materials, depending on their origin, style, and intended use. All pine tables are composed of a flat surface and a base with one or more supports, or legs. A pine table with a single, central foot is a pedestal table. Pine Tables can be freestanding or designed for placement against a wall (a console table). Pine Table tops can be in virtually any shape, although rectangular, square, round (e.g., the round table), and oval tops are the most frequent. Long pine tables often have extra legs for support. Others have higher surfaces for personal use while either standing or sitting on a tall stool.

Many pine tables have tops that can be adjusted to change their position or size, either with foldable extensions or sliding parts that can alter the shape of the top. Some tables are entirely foldable for easy transport, e.g., camping. Small tables in trains and aircraft may be fixed or foldable, although many are simply convenient shelves rather than tables.

• A pine coffee table is a low pine table designed for use in a living room, in front of a sofa, for convenient placement of drinks, books, or other personal items.
• A chess table is a type of games table that integrates a chessboard.
• A pine Refectory table is a long pine table designed to seat many people during dining.
• A pine Dining room table is any pine table designed to be dined at.

Historically, various types of pine tables have been popular for other uses:

• Tripod tables were very popular during the 18th and 19th centuries as candlestands, tea tables, or small dining tables. Their typically round tops often had a tilting mechanism and sometimes rotated as well. The folding top enabled them to be stored out of the way (e.g., in room corners) when not in use.
• Pembroke tables were first introduced during the 18th century and were popular throughout the 19th century. Their main characteristic was a rectangular or oval top with folding or drop leaves on each side. Most examples have one or more drawers and four legs sometimes connected by "stretchers." Their design meant they could easily be stored or moved about and conveniently opened for serving tea, dining, writing, or other occasional uses.
• Sofa tables evolved from Pembroke tables and usually have longer and narrower tops. They were specifically designed for placement directly in front of sofas for serving tea, writing, dining, or other convenient uses.
• Work tables were small tables designed to hold sewing materials and implements, providing a convenient work place for women who sewed. They appeared during the 18th century and were popular throughout the 19th century. Most examples have rectangular tops, sometimes with folding leaves, and usually one or more drawers fitted with partitions. Early examples typically have four legs, often standing on casters, while later examples sometimes have turned columns or other forms of support.
• Drum tables are round tables introduced for writing, with drawers around the platform.
• End tables are small tables typically placed beside couches or armchairs. Often lamps will be placed on an end table.
• Billiards tables are bounded tables on which billiards-type games are played. All provide a flat surface, usually composed of slate and covered with cloth, elevated above the ground.
• Table tennis tables are usually masonite or a similar timber, layered with a smooth low-friction coating. It is divided into two halves by a low net, which separates opposing players.

A pine table can be used temporarily for objects such as food and eating utensils during a meal, cups for drinks, a book (especially a big one, that one can not easily keep in one's hands), a spread-out map, writing paper during writing, and anything that requires having several objects at hand, including various hobbies. Pine Tables are frequently used to drop small items on such as keychains or pens until further use. Tables sometimes substitute for other pieces of furniture, such as chairs and beds that require little more than a flat surface to accomplish their basic goal.

Things may also be put more permanently on a table, for example a TV, computer, objects for decoration (such as vases or tablecloths) etc. Table settings of food are laid out in a traditional arrangement.

Wooden tables are often used in hardcore wrestling matches. They are used for wrestlers to be slammed through, and very rarely are they used as weapons after they are broken.

Through recent pop culture, tables have also been used as a place to perform sexual intercourse. This practice has been referenced many times in episodes of King of the Hill and The Simpsons.

History

Some very early tables were made and used by the Egyptians, and were little more than metal or stone platforms used to keep objects off the floor. They were not used for seating people. Food was put on large plates deposed on a pedestal for eating. The Egyptians made use of various small tables and elevated playing boards. The Chinese also created very early tables in order to pursue the arts of writing and painting.

The Greeks and Romans made more frequent use of tables, notably for eating, although Greek tables were pushed under a bed after use. The Greeks invented a piece of furniture very similar to the guˇridon. Tables were made of marble or wood and metal (typically bronze or silver alloys). Later, the larger rectangular tables were made of separate platforms and pillars. The Romans also introduced a large, semicircular table to Italy, the mensa lunata.

Furniture during the Middle Ages is not as well-known as that of earlier or later periods, and most sources show the types used by the nobility. In the Eastern Roman Empire, tables were made of metal or wood, usually with four feet and frequently linked by x-shaped stretchers. Tables for eating were large and often round or semicircular. A combination of a small round table and a lectern seemed very popular as a writing table. In western Europe, the invasions and intestine wars caused most of the knowledge inherited from the classical era to be lost. As a result of the necessary movability, most tables were simple trestle tables, although small round tables made from joinery reappeared during the 15th century and onward. In the Gothic era, the chest (furniture) became widespread and was often used as a table.

Refectory tables first appeared at least as early as the 16th century, as an evolution of the trestle table; these tables were typically quite long and capable of supporting a sizeable banquet in the great hall or other reception room of a castle.

Refectory Tables

A refectory table is a highly elongated table used originally for dining in monasteries in Medieval times. In the Late Middle Ages the refectory table evolved into a banqueting or feasting table in castles and other noble residences. The original dining table manufacture was by hand and created of oak or walnut; the design is based on a trestle-style. Typically the table legs are supported by circumferential stretchers positioned very low to the floor. An equally common medieval type used for dining was made with four legs, connected at their feet by sturdy stretchers. Such early dining tables known as "joined tables" (see also joint stools) were large and massive, and were often furnished with draw-leaves to further increase their capacity.

History

In its original use, one or more refectory tables were placed within the monks' dining hall or refectory. The larger refectories would have a number of refectory tables where monks would take their meals, often while hearing sermons addressed from an elevated stone pulpit, frequently preached from a stone staircase to one side of the refectory. Secular use of the refectory table is thought to have originated in the Mediterranean regions of Europe, where increasingly ornate designs were adopted by Italian and other craftsmen. Adaptation of the refectory table outside the monasteries traveled to central and northern parts of Europe in the late 16th century. For example the Italian artist Giulio Romano traveled to France in the first half of the 16th century and brought concepts of the Italian style to the French court of Francis I. Later in the 16th century the secular refectory table spread to Flemish and German locales. While the Mediterranean refectory tables emphasized the use of walnut, oak wood became equally common in these more northern parts of Europe.

By Tudor times (the 16th century), the legs of these dining tables were often formed with large, bulbous turnings, and eventually gave rise to single or double pedestal tables. A parallel development can be seen in the manufacture of tables designed to be situated along or against a wall rather than in the center of a room. Console tables (made with brackets and no back legs), pier tables (so-named because they were originally designed to occupy the wall space between windows), side tables, and hall tables are all examples of this type.

Coffee Tables

A pine coffee table is a style of long, low table which is designed to be placed in front of a couch, to support beverages (hence the name), magazines, books (especially coffee table books), and other small items to be used while sitting, such as coasters. Coffee tables are usually found in the living room or sitting room. They are available in many different variations and prices vary from style to style. Coffee tables may also incorporate cabinets for storage.

The idiom "Gather round the coffee table" is derived from the furniture piece and its proclivity for encouraging conviviality and light conversation.

Origins of the Coffee Table

The first tables, in Europe, specifically designed as and called coffee tables, appear to have been made in Britain during the late Victorian era.

Prior to the late 18th century, the tables used in Europe in conjunction with a settle included occasional tables, end tables, centre tables, and tea tables. By 1780, the high backed settle was being relaced by low back sofas and this led to the development of sofa tables which stood against the back of the sofa and could be used by anyone sitting on the sofa to put down a book or a cup.

According to the listing in Victorian Furniture by R. W. Symonds & B. B. Whineray and also in The Country Life Book of English Furniture by Edward T. Joy, a table designed by E. W. Godwin in 1868 and made in large numbers by William Watt, and Collinson and Lock, is a coffee table. If this is correct it may be one of the earliest made in Europe. Other sources, however, list it only as 'table' so this cannot be stated categorically. Far from being a low table, this table was about twenty-seven inches high.

Later pine coffee tables were designed as low tables and this idea may have been introduced from the Ottoman Empire, based on the tables in use in tea gardens. However, as the Anglo-Japanese style was popular in Britain throughout the 1870s and 1880s and low tables were common in Japan, this would seem to be an equally likely source for the concept of a long low table.

From the late 19th century onwards, many coffee tables were subsequently made in earlier styles due to the popularity of revivalism, so it it is quite possible to find Louis XVI style coffee tables or Georgian style coffee tables, but there seems to be no evidence of a table actually made as a coffee table before this time. Joseph Aronson writing in 1938 defines a coffee table as a, "Low wide table now used before a sofa or couch. There is no historical precedent...," suggesting that coffee tables were a late development in the history of furniture. Coffee tables may be used for taking coffee, but whose position in front of a couch or sofa, and its consequent lower height, is of greater importance as a social focus.

CILSS Antique Dining Tables and Dining Table History

INTRODUCTION TO ANTIQUE DINING TABLES AND THEIR HISTORY

The earliest surviving type of dining table is the trestle table used in the middle Ages. Since the top was made from long wooden planks resting on trestles, such tables could be dismantled and moved to the side of the hall when space was needed for other activities.

In medieval times, the assembled company ate together in the great hall, with the master and mistress of the house usually seated at a smaller table raised on a dais. By the mid-16th century, however, it had become more common for the master and his family to eat in a separate room, and more permanent tables evolved. The term refectory table has been applied to these early "solid" tables since the 19th century. Styles varied, but such tables were popular all over Europe.

In the mid-17th century antique gate-leg dining tables, which had flaps that could be folded down when the table was not in use became popular for dining. Initially, these tables were often quite large - up to 8 feet in diameter - but as time went by and it became fashionable to use several small tables rather than one large one, they became smaller.

The rectangular top of most antique refectory dining tables consists of two or three planks and should always have the good patina that comes age and use.

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History of Tables

Throughout the centuries the antique pine table was developed, to become a wood board placed on a small horse, in the huge variety of forms that are today. The evolution of the table show the change in the social habits that accompanied in the increase of the home comfort and leisure activities, as well as the social and domestic life.

The furniture that existed in the Average Age was reserved for the high class, whose life style demanded easily transportable pieces. The first pine tables were simple, wooden boards placed on small trestles, that could dismount themselves conveniently. The more established communities like monasteries, had more: permanent, heavy and rectangular pine tables. The refectory table produced generally of pine, received this name because was used to eat. In the 17th century people began to eat in dining rooms and more flexible tables were produced with compact forms; like a round or oval table, with folding eaves on hinges. While the small round pine tables were used to place candles.

The round pine wood table of the 17th century evolved in the 1730 decade, when pine tables appeared with three legs and often with folding boards. The small auxiliary pine tables supported against the wall, were transformed into the most elaborated and formal tables. The dining room pine table with pedestal supports were introduced in the last 20 years of the 17th century. Victorian homes were full of tables for every occasion. The prosperous middle-class and its families ate in dining rooms,on a large central dining table that could be extended. In the 20th century new materials were used such as metal, crystal or plastic, to produce versatile dining tables.

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History

Until about the sixteenth century, when decorative and stylistically distinctive furniture became very important, pine dining tables were less frequently found than either the chair or the chest (which held clothing as a chest of drawers does today). However, there were tables in the ancient world. Different cultures made them of different materials. Egyptian tables were of wood or stone and resembled pedestals. It is said the Assyrians made them of metal. Pompeii and Herculaneum populaces had tables made with supporting members of marble.

Cathedrals in the Middle Ages used communion tables that stood on masonry or on a base of stone. Castles often included large, rectangular plank pine tables with the master of the castle in the center and the less important inhabitants or guests at right angles to him. More ordinary medieval tables that survive include simple wooden tables supported by plain side members. Early seventeenth century American tables were generally of the trestle type, with a plank top and vertical planks on the side. Some could be dismantled if more room was needed; many were just moved against the wall to provide space when the table was not in use.

Decoration became very important to the wealthy about the sixteenth century as well. Stylish furniture was ornately carved and included turnings made on foot-pedal lathes. Until the mid-seventeenth century most furniture was constructed by joiners who made furniture much as they made houses, with pegs, mortise and tenon construction, and massive members for supporting the slab tops. In the later seventeenth and eighteenth century the cabinetmaker began making fine furniture, creating sculptural pieces that were veneered, carved, and expertly joined including the use of interlocked dovetailing for strength.

In the early nineteenth century the machine enabled manufacturers to provide attractive furniture far less expensively. Wood was cut by water, steam, or electrical saws, machine sanded, machine incised and decorated, turned on machine lathes, and so forth. By 1890, all but the very poorest Americans could afford to purchase an inexpensive table and chairs. In the early twentieth century the table changed again, this time because new, unconventional materials were used in its construction such as laminate, plastic, and chipboard, making tables truly affordable for all. As new activities were enjoyed and embraced, tables changed form, too. Table forms that were invented in the past 200 years include the card tables, gaming tables, tea tables, dressing tables, nappy changing tables, and computer tables.