I found the dining room table I want... well, I've wanted this table for a good 5 years (I just finally told myself yes)
I have a few options and I need your opinions.
I love the Eero Saarinen tulip table in Carrera marble (if you don't we cant be friends)
my options are (and this is where you come in)
1. Splurge and buy the original piece
2. Buy a "tulip inspired" base and get a remnant piece of marble from a fabricator
3. Buy a "inspired" base and get a custom english ash top made.
An idea of the room:
the table and chairs will be on a sisal are rug which is on black hardwood floors. I already have a George Nelson cigar bubble lamp (which could be changed)... The wall color is Blue Sage from Restoration Hardware.
What do you think?
For people with big budgets & a sharp eye--or friends with sharp eyes--going with the real thing is a given. For people with minimal budgets, it's not even an option. Then there's everybody in between.
ReplyDeleteFor people like me, the financial consequences of a decision to spring for an original Saarinen table instead of a knockoff would mean eliminating other things. There goes my trip to London. There goes the Vespa. There goes dinner. Then again, Art doesn't come without some pain & sacrifice, so, with that in mind, let's leave the heroics (and the finances) out of the discussion for just a minute & look only at the aesthetics.
In combination with, say, some 19th Century reproduction Chippendale chairs, you could probably get by with the knockoff, because the contrast between the masculine chairs--with their dark, glossy finish, vigorous scrolls & bold outlines--and the clean lines, smooth finish & pale color of the feminine table would distract the eye from the columnar support of the table, which, in a knockoff, never has the attenuated grace of the earliest originals but tends toward the heavy & cylindrical. People who don't know the difference between a Saarinen table & an Ikea table won't see one anyway, but even people who do know the difference may not notice if they're concentrating on the interesting visual mashup between two different furniture styles.
On the other hand, paired with the purity of line in genuine Saarinen chairs, the heavy proportions of a knockoff table's pedestal would be obvious, and you don't want to find yourself humming "One of these things is not like the others" every time you sit down to dinner.
Don't get me wrong: Saarinen being dead & all, I'd have no more moral qualms about using a copy of the Tulip table than I would using a Victorian copy of the Chippendale chair, but I'd never do it in a situation where the substitution of one for the other was obvious as it would be with a mixture of the real & the genuine.
Survey says If you're not in a position to give up vacations, ditch eating out or send the kids to school in hand-me-down My Little Pony just to buy the genuine article, you might think about--while you save up for the real thing--looking for a more traditional pedestal table, say, a blonde mahogany Biedermeier reproduction from the 195Os. The clean lines of such a table would look good with your chairs, they show up at resale shops from time to time--I know because that's where I picked one up for $50--and best of all, until you can comfortably afford the Saarinen table of your dreams, it wouldn't invite unfavorable comparisons with the genuine pieces sitting next to it.
Magnaverde
OK, Gregory, I'm back.
ReplyDeleteHad I noticed that the line beginning "These are the chairs..." was a link to a different post, not a reference to the picture at the top of this post, the underlying point of my advice would have been the same, although Thomas Chippendale wouldn't have put in a guest appearance & my final answer would have been 180 degrees away from what it was. Oh, well. Like Ralph Waldo Emerson says, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
In other words, the choice of an "inspired by" table will probably work out just fine. In fact, the straight-lined solidity of the uprights of the Chinese-style chairs, will probably be better served by the heavier section on the pedestal of most modern versions of Saarinen's table than they would by the tapered center of his original design anyway, which means you can go on vacation after all. Just in case, to keep the eye focused on the contrasting elements that will make the whole thing work, I'd go for the knockoff base with a stained-wood top, preferably medium-dark to dark.
In Louis Sullivan's autobiography, he quotes Monsieur Clopet, his old mathematics instructor in Paris, who tossed out a textbook full of of so-called 'rules' that yet had special cases & exceptions in which the rules didn't apply, telling Sullivan "Our rules shall be so broad as to allow NO exceptions."
Changing one side of an equation--in this case, the chairs--means you need to change the other side of the equation as well--the table that best complements them--but although the answer is now different than it was an hour ago, the underlying principle--in this case, Primacy of Contrasts--still applies.
Thus endeth the lesson.
M.