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Star of the show in Bon Marché at the moment is the misleadingly simple Arco table Nomad, designed by Jorre Van Ast. The first thing that I noticed about it was it’s pencil style legs with screw threads at the top for joining them to the table top. Normally this table top would need to be thick and heavy but when you stand over it the table top appears to be impossibly thin. Then look at it from a distance or sit down beside it and the sublime simple 3D bulge of it’s underbelly reveals itself. As you move around it the changes in direction of the lines in the oak veneer bring out this curve, without this it would be tricky to understand how the bump bulges. I imagine that while you’re sitting by this table your hands would spend quite a while stroking it’s underbelly.
It’s construction is pure woodsman rocket science. The legs are made of ash and the core is a cellulose honeycomb with balsa and poplar wood, and finally the aforementioned perfectly curved oak veneer. Tough and light, this highly mobile table has just the right measure of non-ostentatious sophistication for urbanites on the move.
