Antique and Vintage Coffee Tables

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Historically speaking, tables used for serving coffee were introduced to Europe with the arrival of the first coffee houses in the 17th century. These bourgeois establishments often included small cafe-style tables, giving patrons a place to set...
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Historically speaking, tables used for serving coffee were introduced to Europe with the arrival of the first coffee houses in the 17th century. These bourgeois establishments often included small cafe-style tables, giving patrons a place to set their coffee cups and reading material while indulging in the caffeinated beverage. Yet such tables weren’t readily adopted into private homes. In fact, for domestic use, tea tables preceded coffee tables. During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, as the popularity of drinking tea exploded across urban areas in Europe and the United States, fashionable homes often included a tea table. Typically, these were small rectangular wood tables with raised, decorative trimming known as a “galleried edge” to prevent cups, saucers, teapots, and spills from sliding off the surface. Some early tea-table designs were actually portable trays that mounted onto stands. In the later 18th century, many tea tables featured a round hinged top that tilted vertically to allow for easier storage when not in use. Like dining tables, tea tables were typically over two feet in height, or around 28 to 30 inches tall, and sometimes included ornately carved wooden legs or inlaid brass or silver designs. In the United States, owing to well-established trade routes with China, tea was generally cheaper than coffee until the mid-19th century, when coffee imported from Latin America became a more common sight in American homes. Regardless, what we think of coffee tables today—low tables used as a centerpiece feature in living rooms—are really a 20th-century development. F. Stuart Foote of the Imperial Furniture Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan, claimed to have invented the coffee table while helping his wife prepare for a party simply by shortening the legs of an existing dining table. Others cite the surge in popularity of French-style “tables bas” (literally meaning “low tables”) around 1915. Though traditionally placed at the...
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