What is a table? All about your home’s most important piece of furniture
One of the most used items of furniture in the home is a table. Whether the table is in the kitchen, dining room, living room or outdoors, no home is complete without one.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, the word table comes from the Latin word tabula, which means “a board, plank, flat top piece.”
The practice of using a table for eating took hold in Greece and Rome. Most tables were one complete piece, made with marble, wood or metal. These tables had one solid piece in the center. Later, the Greeks and Romans made rectangular dining tables in two parts — the platform separate from the pillar. No doubt this made transporting or moving it much easier than the heavy one-piece table.
Throughout history, tables have been used, starting as low platforms to keep food and other items off the floor. The earliest platforms were made from stone, although archeologists discovered wooden tables in tombs. Therefore, we know that tables date to 2500 BC. Other locations where there is evidence of tables used for eating and writing, and painting include China and Mesopotamia. The Egyptians utilized small tables and taller platforms for board games.
During the Eastern Roman Empire, we see another change to the design of the dining table. Tables were made with four feet and linked by stretchers in the shape of an “X.” Large, round or semicircular tables were popular and used for dining. Most tables in this period were made from wood or metal. More sophisticated joinery, using intricate designs to hold wood together, is evidenced starting in the 15th century.
In the middle ages, the refectory table was a common type of table used for banquets in great halls of castles and monasteries. The refectory table is known for its great length and width since it was meant to seat many people at one time.
Today, we use tables for more than just eating and dining. In our living rooms, we use coffee and side tables to put refreshments and display decorative items. We situate night tables beside beds where we place lamps, an alarm clock and charge our phones. We see board room tables, drafting tables, and other specialized pieces of platform furniture in the work environment.
Other types of tables include workbenches, which have elevated platforms and can be used while standing or with a high stool. Workbenches are excellent for doing assembly and repairs or any work that might require precision. Workbenches are not the same as a worktable. The worktable was initially designed for women who sewed and held everything needed for creating clothing, drapes, linens and other household fabric goods.
Console tables, which are also called pier tables, are designed for placing against walls. Console tables used to come with brackets, which allowed you to attach them to the wall, although this is not common today.
Pembroke tables became popular in the 19th century. This table design included drop leaves so they could be stored or moved easily when not in use. When needed, you could easily create a full-size dining table by simply raising and supporting the leaves. Sofa tables are like Pembroke tables in that they both are designed to be longer and narrower. Although we use sofa tables today primarily to hold lamps or décor, their original purpose was for serving tea. Tables are also used for billiards, chess, table tennis and poker or card games.
Since Victorian times, the dining table has been more than just a place to have something to eat. Parents used mealtime to educate their children on manners, proper conversation and religion. It also became a place where all family members would come together regularly to share what happened during their day. The family dinner’s ideological concept was reinforced through popular TV shows in the 1950s and 1960s in programs like “Leave it to Beaver.”
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It may be a simple inanimate object, but we would be lost without the humble table. It has been serving many purposes since the times of ancient Rome and Egypt and comes in a multitude of designs, shapes and sizes.
Four-legged tables were first documented in ancient Egypt. They were mainly used for dining and for playing games. Usually low and made of wood, they were also made of metal or stone. Some tables had three legs, or even just one thick leg in the centre.
© Pxhere
Egyptian tables
The Egyptian gaming tables were used to play a board game called Senet using a board fashioned out of stone. There was also a game called Mehen (alias “game of the snake”), played on a table with a surface carved into the shape of a snake. Although these games are known to have existed, historians are unsure of the exact rules, since there is little documented evidence of how they were played.
Other small tables held plates of food. They were often made of stone and could be ornately carved. Some of these tables were found in ancient tombs and shrines. They were known as “offering tables” and provided food for the afterlife.
Greek and Roman tables
In ancient Greece and Rome, four-legged tables were also used, as were slab-sided tables, which were commonly used as altars. The tables in ancient Rome were very low, as they were used by people seated on couches.
Over the centuries, table heights have risen to coincide with changes in seating. The more recent tables are higher to reflect being used with dining chairs.
In ancient Greece, tables were quite similar to those in Rome, with one central leg, three legs or four legs. They often had a circular top and were used mainly for dining. In historic drawings depicting banquets, some showed diners having a single small table each, rather than collectively using a large table.
In Greece, tables were smaller because it was customary to push them under the bed after use. The Greeks invented a design similar to the modern-day guéridon: the small, highly decorative and circular-topped table. Supported by one or more columns, or human and mythological sculpted figures, they were made of metal (typically silver or bronze), marble or wood, with richly ornate legs.
The Greeks also made large, rectangular tables, while the Romans crafted a semi-circular table called the mensa lunata. This became popular across Italy.
Western tables
In the Western world, the earliest tables were very simple, consisting of wooden boards supported by trestles, dating from the Medieval era. They were erected at meal times and stored away to save space when not in use. They were the predecessor of the modern trestle table.
The long, narrow, trestle tables used for group dining in places such as monasteries were known as refectory tables. Another long Medieval dining table, catering for many people, comprised a number of four-legged tables joined at their feet by sturdy fasteners. These were called “joined tables”. They were huge and often had collapsible drop-leaves to increase their capacity further.
By the 16th century, in Tudor times, dining table legs had become much more ornate and were often crafted with large, bulbous turnings. Over time, single and double pedestal tables evolved. At the same time, tables designed to stand against a wall, rather than in the centre of the room, also appeared. They were made with wall brackets and had only two legs. They were known as console tables.
Similar types of table in the same “family” were pier tables created to occupy the wall space between windows, hall tables and side tables.
Specialist designs
In the 18th and 19th centuries, a table known as a “loo table” was created to play the popular card game of lanterloo, nicknamed “loo”. It had a round or oval top and was also used as a candle-stand, tea table, or small dining table. It typically had a tilting mechanism, so it could be stored when not in use.
The Pembroke table was launched in the 18th century and remained popular throughout the 19th century. It had an oval or rectangular top. Most had at least one drawer and they were designed so they could be moved easily or stored. They were mainly used for serving tea, dining, writing and for other occasional uses.
The worktable was designed in the 18th century to hold sewing implements and materials, providing a convenient place for women who sewed to store everything in one place.
Sewing was something upper-class young ladies were expected to learn as an accomplishment, while it was a way of earning money and repairing the family’s clothing for ordinary working class people. The tables commonly had a rectangular top, folding leaves, and drawers fitted with partitions.
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