Tree Trunk Table

In a 2017 interview with the Hindustan Times, Rajnish Wattas, noted architecture critic and a former head of the Chandigarh College of Architecture, said that, in fitting out the new buildings of Chandigarh, Pierre Jeanneret’s work with the craftspeople onsite “created poetry out of local material”. Few objects exemplify this poetry as well the Tree Trunk Table.

A blurry black-and-white photograph of Pierre Jeanneret reading a magazine in his Sector 5 Chandigarh home shows what was perhaps the earliest prototype of this table: a thick slab of wood mounted on stacked bricks. The picture summons up a sense of comfortable domesticity—courtesy the teapot, cup-and-saucer, and small vessels for sugar and cream that sit atop of the slab—and it is easy to forget that almost every piece in this photograph was an experiment.

Throughout the Chandigarh project, Jeanneret lived in that house, and many of the furniture prototypes he made for the city’s various buildings were first tested there. The final form of the low lounge table—sometimes referred to as the ‘tree-trunk table’, or ‘teak lounge table’—was a perfect example of his approach to designing furniture for the upcoming city. It used materials that were local and plentiful, and craftsmanship that was on hand. The top of this table was often just a thick slab of teak or mango wood, mounted on a cast-iron base, held up by three V-type legs in wrought iron. The piece was simple, functional, easy to execute and somehow, more beautiful for it.

Phantom Hands’ re-edition of this lounge table retains the spirit of the original, staying true to the structure and the material palette of local wood (in this case, Indian walnut) and iron. Thick slabs like these tend to have cracks, as also seen in the originals, so Phantom Hands’ pieces use butterfly joints to stabilise them.

Because each tabletop requires a suitable wood slab, this piece is crafted exclusively on an as-available basis. The wood variety is subject to change and depends on what is available at the point of placing the order.