Contemporary is an interesting word. Victorian furniture would have been contemporary in the 1840s, Stickley furniture was contemporary to the 19-teens, and so on. When the Journal first published this table plan back in the 1980s, it was contemporary, but so is our new version of it!
Senior editor Chris Marshall spotted this classic plan from our archives recently and liked its style (see inset). He suggested we reprise it and bring it up to date. Jeff Jacobson, our senior art director, and I looked over the project and made some changes, and the result is at left. It’s identical in some ways but vastly changed in others.
First off, I got rid of the “shelf” pieces at the bottom of the leg set. Everything else on the table was shaped and curved, yet those pieces were rectilinear. I wanted to round over the tops of each of the legs, but Jeff said no — the recurved ends complimented the shape of the tabletop. I also decided to dye the framework black. The dark base would anchor the tabletop with color accents at the through tenons, connecting the top and bottom. I had another reason for using dye that I will get to in a moment.
For the tabletop, I wanted to make it from bigleaf maple in its
