Antique furniture calls to mind images of heavy, ornately decorated tables and chairs that one would probably never mistake for having made in recent years. You know the type: those solid wood and gilt creations dating from centuries ago and which were located in regal settings such as the Versailles Palace near Paris or the Winter Palace in Moscow. But that kind of furniture is positively present-day if you compare it to a certain wooden dining table that was being offered at a department store in London a year ago.

The wood from which the table top is made is 30,000 years old. Yes, you read that right. It’s thirty centuries old. It was taken from Kauri trees in New Zealand, which had remained submerged in salt marsh swamps over the millennia. The combination of immersion in mud and lack of oxygen created a perfect condition for preserving the wood and preventing its degradation. This ancient dining table was priced at £7,000 at the Selfridges department store. There’s no doubt about the wood’s antiquity; its age has been verified via carbon dating techniques, and a certificate of authenticity comes with the furniture. In spite of its ancientness though, it looks very modern; not a caveman-type of thing at all. Only the material is old; the design is all 21^st-century.

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Modern dining furniture for restaurants, bars, and cafes does not necessarily have to be all shiny and glitzy or too radical looking, and it doesn’t always have to look like it would belong in the cafeteria of the Starship Enterprise. There are many characteristics that define modern furniture, either by the way it looks or the materials used to make it.

When I first saw the Creso dining table over at Bonluxat, the words “clean” and “modern” were what first came to mind. Designed by Lella and Massimo Vignelli, it is characterized by bold but simple curves. Its elegance is anything but delicate. It seems heavy in appearance to me, maybe because of the thick base. But that would probably make it good café dining furniture – the better to withstand heavy use in such a commercial setting.

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One of the many things that young children love to do is to scribble or to draw. Let them get their hands on crayons, pencils, markers, pens, or whatever else and they will use them, whether or not they have paper or other suitable materials on which to draw. Lacking that, any surface will do – walls or tables even. Crayon scribblings or drawings on the walls in houses of friends with young children are not an uncommon sight.

In a restaurant that caters to families, therefore, I think the Woody Chalkboard Table by Eric Pfeiffer would be a perfect piece of furniture. I saw this over at Bonluxat and was immediately struck by how useful it would be in a commercial setting as well as at home. Children tend to become restless while they are waiting for food to be served, and not all parents have the foresight to bring along something to keep their children entertained or busy. What better way to keep them occupied than to allow them to do something that all of them seem somehow programmed to do at that young age, which is to draw? They can scribble or draw to their heart’s content on the table’s surface itself; no more need to worry about toddlers running about getting in other people’s way or doing other undesirable things because they are bored.

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Botanists make me think of intrepid creatures to venture out into uncharted woods and jungles to find and document yet undiscovered species of plant life – just because it’s what they want to do; they aren’t in it for the money. I don’t think anybody has ever made millions of dollars from finding a new species of a bush or tree, have they? But the plants they find can be not only pretty, but have life-changing implications too. For instance, a number of them have been discovered to have compounds that can treat various diseases.

The Botanist cocktail table designed by Dario Antonioni and Brandon Lynne is a great tribute to botany and botanists worldwide. It looks so attractive with its floral motif, and it is eminently functional and practical too. Paired with suitable contract café chairs, these tables would look so charming in any restaurant, bar or café. They aren’t flashy-looking, only having subtle designs and vivid colors. They are great examples of understated elegance.

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Nature is such a rich source of inspiration for furniture designers, as we have seen time and again. Stools inspired by forest foliage; beds inspired by clouds; sofas inspired by feline forms; tables inspired by the ocean’s waves. Filipino designer Kenneth Cobonpue’s Wave Dining Table is an example of the last one.

It amazes me how creative minds like his can capture a dynamic moment and sculpt it in still life in such a way that the viewer or user can somehow feel or sense what the real thing may have been like. The undulating, sinuous movement of the table’s base does seem reminiscent of the graceful motions of waves gently coming to shore. Gentle being the operative word here, not the violent force of something like a tsunami, which is terrible in its beauty.

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Inanimate objects of intimacy number in the thousands, and we’re not talking just about sexually-oriented things here. There’s clothing, of course, perfume, bath products and more. More personally, there are love letters, and in this age of the Internet we also have text messages and email. Furniture can also be inspired by intimacy, as shown in the Leonardo Dining Table.

The designers of this table, Frenchmen Clerc Bertrand, Olivier Gregoire and Matthieu Plantrou, state that their creation is a simple yet visually pleasing object about intimacy, love, and desire. Unlike some other pieces of furniture, their table does not adhere to the “form follows function” philosophy. Instead, the Leonardo Dining Table’s form follows emotions. I am not sure what particular emotions they were feeling when they crafted this table and the chairs that go along with it. But I think the chairs’ legs look a bit flirty, the way human legs might look when they are playing footsies in secret underneath the table.

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I must admit that though I like science fiction books and movies, I haven’t read or seen too much of them. I was never a part of the huge following of films and TV shows like Star Trek, though I did very much enjoy the Star Wars movies. But for the life of me I can’t see the relationship between the Lunar Dining Table and sci-fi films.

Designed by Manolo Bossi and manufactured by spHaus, it is said that the base of the table is reminiscent of lunar landscapes seen in old science fiction movies. Maybe aficionados of such movies and literature will be able to see the resemblance, but I sure don’t. However, there is no denying that it looks to be a very attractive table indeed, lunar landscapes or not. It is an indoor table that would look good as contract bar furniture because of its modern, clean appearance.

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