Coffee Table, 1950s Steel Rod and Woolstore Ash

Steel rod furniture is a post-war idea. Wartime production had got very good at bending and welding thin steel, and when that capacity turned domestic the result was a decade of furniture that looked like it weighed nothing, splayed legs, open frames, and a welded wire grid slung underneath for the magazines. That shelf is the most dated thing about it and the most telling, because it assumes a living room reorganised around a low table, a television and a weekly stack of print, which is exactly what the 1950s was busy doing. This base is from that moment and, like most of them, it outlived whatever was first screwed to the top of it.

What sits on it now is Victorian ash out of the wool store on Sunshine Road in West Footscray, built in the 1940s as the largest in the state, left empty for years and then filled with sound systems and several thousand people at a time. The boards were dressed and glued into a new top, so what you see is the timber rather than the building. Gum veins the length of it, a few tight knots, and a surface that was made rather than found. The wool store is where this wood comes from. It is not a mark left on it for effect.

Specifications

• Base mid 20th century, origin open; top made recently from salvaged timber
• Unmarked; base maker unknown, attribution open
• Black painted steel rod base, splayed legs, with a welded wire grid shelf slung beneath the top
• Top in Victorian ash salvaged from a woolstore in Melbourne's west, dressed and glued up as a new board; gum veins and small tight knots run through it
• 140 cm wide, 48 cm deep, 39 cm high
• New top cut, joined and finished by KOBK; base cleaned only
• Very sturdy and heavy; base sound, top newly made