Unity in Design -- The Marco Coffee Table

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New in the showroom: one of our absolute favorite pieces we make, a design that brings together the two halves of ShackletonThomas, the furniture and the pottery, may we present The Marco's Coffee Table!  

This rare collaboration of Miranda and Charles's design, brought to life by our master furniture maker Clara Florin, the table has a beautiful walnut frame and base featuring mitred corners.  Inside the frame is a composition on Black Carved tiles depicting the Tree of Life with a variety of animals at its base and in its branches.
The Marco's Table begins its life in both the pottery and the woodshop.  On the pottery side, the team rolls and cuts tiles, carefully monitoring the drying process, keeping them weighted, and turning them periodically to prevent warping.  Once they are dried to leather hard, the tiles are coated in iron rich slip and dried again for a day or two. Then the fun begins.  

Miranda lays out the grid of tiles and begins to draw, freehand, the Tree of Life with the quill of an African porcupine.  She starts at the base and curves the trunk upward into the branches, splitting and splitting again.  She nestles animals on the ground beneath it and up among the branches, playing out their own particular story.  She describes the technique and the narrative in the video below.  
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Meanwhile, over in the wood shop, Clara Florin chose beautiful, rich pieces of walnut from our stock.  She milled them down and constructed a solid, mortised trestle base to support the substantial 1 3/4" thick top.  The result is a clean, contemporary piece that allows the beauty of the wood shine through, setting off the tile at its center.  
 
Once the base is made, Clara lays the tiles in a mortar bed and completes the frame around it precisely to measurements of the tiles.  The result is a  piece that straddles the line between art and furniture.  It would the be centerpiece of any living room, bringing with it beauty and function.

This one-of-a-kind table is available to ship today.  Email store@shackletonthomas.com to claim it for your home.
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