Paul Loebach has design in his genes, here’s what his web-site says about him. “Descended from a long line of German woodworkers, Paul’s grandfather built airplanes for the U.S. military in the 1940’s, and his father is a manufacturing engineer who developed new plastic molding technologies for Union Carbide in the 1970’s. His work is a part of an idealistic transformation from a craft-based past to a design/engineering oriented future.”

This table is called Watson after James Watson, one of the scientists who co-discovered the shape of DNA. The leg shape also refers to the late 17th century English barley sugar twist, turned wood which was used for furniture legs. These ones however are made quite differently. Wood and carbon fiber are sandwiched together to provide optimum performance for a minimum volume of material, a fusion of aerospace and boat building technology.

This Lazy Susan table bring a whole new meaning to recycled. It is made from a broken bicycle by Jennifer Bogo  at the “how to make crappy stuff awesome” class in New York (she give complete instructions on how to built it).  When I look around my cellar I start to think that it would be great to have that kind of class in Paris.

John Nouhanesing is a young French designer still in his twenties. His “Paint or Die, But Love Me” table shows all the passion of youth. Made of steel with glossy acrylic paint, it’s still a prototype. I’m taking him at his word so I’ll be show more of his work in the future.

Karl Kraus (1874-1936), Austrian author and journalist.

Heals on the Tottenham court road in London, is the furniture store where students of architecture go to salavate over various designer goodies. Yet the only furniture that you’re actually likely to use while in Heals is in the Oliver Peyton Restaurant Meals. A few years ago he hired the hip architecural firm FAT,(fashion architecture taste), to design it. Fat’s designs are concerned with real emotions, memory, images, politics , language and place , rather than prevailing diktats of modernist abstraction.

These Trompe l’oeil tables are a careful balance of a language of domestic simplicity and the feel of high quality event. The table-cloth table-top is mdf with a white colour core formica laminate, so there are no black edges at the corners of the formica and it would still looks good even if it were chipped. This sits on a supporting frame that is held off the ground by solid oak legs.

They are quite at home in the restaurant’s oak cut-out set of a garden tea-time, in the centre of London.

Camping should be a civilised pursuit, and this bamboo, aluminium and steel tables certainly make it so. Made by the Japanese company snow peak these table have the hallmarks of contemporary Japanese design, a respect for the nature of materials, an apparent simplicity and attention to detail. There is a definite feel of luxury to the way they fit in their bag, open easily and click into place. There should be one in the trunk of ever four wheel drive.

The PicNYC table by the architect Haiko Cornelissen is currently an Internet sensation so how could architectstables not post about it. It reminds me of the time that I had a glass of retsina wine for the first (and last) time and was desperately searching for a plant to spill it into, but there was none. If I had been sitting at this table there would never have been an issue.

If this Déjeuner sur l’Herbe were mine I would grow a camomile lawn on it and tend to it daily with nail scissors. In summer I would open the windows and stretch out on it for a little nap. 

Maurizio Fardo has designed various solid aluminium tables. The round three legged table Iny is my favourite, the square table is called Karé and had rounded corners on the version that I saw, and square corners on the web-site. There are also oval and rectangular versions. The legs of all the models have a rectangular sectioned and a round sectioned versions. These designs seem quite flexible.
Aluminium gives much more sparkle than steel and walking around the table-top the brushed lines give a hypnotizing shimmer. The finishes have names like satinado and agua. Even the edges with their dotted effect have a particular sparkle, as if they were the cut off ends of shinny strings which make up the table-top.

 The mining of bauxite from which aluminium is extracted is polluting so consideration needs to be taken when it’s used. A permanent object is a far more appropriate usage for the light weight qualities aluminium than throw away packaging. I would prefer one of these tables as a heirloom piece than a life time of soda cans and kitchen foil.

It is not surprising that the Swiss designer, Max Bill, who wrote a book in 1949 called “Mathematical thinking in the art of our times”, (La Pensée mathématique dans l’art de notre temps), would design a three legged table like this. Triangulation and curved surfaces are a fundamental part of his style. The Dreirundtisch coffee table is made of wood with a linoleum table-top and is currently available at the brilliantly named  Kiss the Design gallery, in Lausanne. An amazing place for post war design.

Reputed to be the precursor of steel furniture design, Mathieu Matégot trained at the school of fine art and architecture in Budapest and moved to Paris as a set designer. He was soon working with fabric, designing dresses and tapestries. He learnt to work with steel in the French army during world war two, after which he became naturalised French.

His attention to texture, juxtaposition and style of detailing reminds me very much of fashion design. Leather edged sleeves are like the brass tipped feet, feather weight joints where one material rolls over the other, bright colours with articulately accessorised separates and most of all light ergonomic fun objects that are designed more for a person than for a room. But any room would be more than delighted to have this Kangourou table, a table within a table, which is now produced by the danish firm GUBI .