1975 DINING TABLE

I designed the table around 1975 and had the cruciform bas made at a steel fabrication place in Fyshwick. I cut the top out of Pyneboard (MDF wasn’t available in those days) and I had a lot of Johnson River hardwood parquet strips left over from another job so Maxine and I pored over the layout of the strips on the circular top for quite a long time. The only pattern that seemed to fit was to start from the centre of the circle with a Fibonnaci sequence of numbers : 1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3+2=5, 5+3=8, 8+5=13. So, in each quadrant of the top we laid out patterns of 1,1,2,3,5,8,13 and it looked good.

Lipping the raw edge of the table was resolved by gluing a veneer strip to about five thicknesses around the smoothed edge. It looked awfully messy until I cleaned it up with a plane, chisel and sanding block. It is 1220mm diam. And has proved to be very flexible in use seating any number up to 8 or 9 equidistantly – something you could not achieve with a rectangular table in such a small space.

It has lasted us now for 40 years and should last for at least another 40 – but the heat from the heliostat in winter is starting to damage the veneering on the window side. The chairs are all by Fred Ward, of course and are at least 55 years old. (2015).

(for the record, we did replace the carpet throughout in 2014 after 30 years of wear which was pretty good going).