Console tables
Console tables are taller, narrow side tables which can be often found in the hallway. Combining practicality with aesthetics is of great importance: after all, console tables are perfect for setting up displays to create a welcoming atmosphere, but also offer a small storage surface near the front door where keys, gloves and mail can be put down. It is not surprising that many console tables include a designated space to store these items.
Marcel Breuer’s elegant, thoroughly modernist, tubular steel ‘B 9 d/1’, designed at the Bauhaus in 1925 and manufactured by Thonet, offers a small shelf beneath the tabletop. Following in this practical spirit, Andreas Janson’s 2013 ‘Lowrider 56’, a reduced wooden console table offers multiple compartments with sliding doors. More minimal designs are available, too. Yael Mer’s and Shay Alkalay’s wall-mounted ‘Deskbox’ for Arco is a narrow, discrete volume that can slide open diagonally to reveal storage within, and when opened it can even be used as a small desk. ‘LOLA’, designed by Beat Glässer for Mox, is essentially a narrow shelf with two slanted chrome legs, which can be simply placed against a wall without any additional support.
Going even further, Jasper Morrison’s ‘Mirror Mirror Consolle’ for Glas Italia mimics the archetypical form of a table and is constructed out of double-sided mirror slabs, effectively dissolving into its surroundings. ‘Cricket’ console table, designed for Sovet by Gianluigi Landoni, is an understated composition combining thin bent glass and a thick wooden bar, which hides a practical drawer.
A more austere, sculptural approach is evident in the bulky ‘Consolle BD38’ by Laurameroni. Conversely Opinion Ciatti ‘Graal’ dissolves the console table into a series of stacked, rectangular boxes, with the topmost elongated one serving as a tabletop, and the ones underneath offering storage. Finally, in the more traditional corner, we have Kirsty Olby’s colourful ‘Chingeling sideboard’, or a more ornate ‘Trinity console’ by Boca do lobo, completing our short introduction to this small, but diverse, product type.
