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The Simple Things: Coffee Tables

The Simple Things:   Coffee Tables

There are many things around the home we take for granted and pay little attention  to. One such item is the humble coffee table.  Home Depot has plenty of coffee tables to choose from and with a Home Depot Money Off Coupon from We Are Coupons you can save money on the ideal center piece for your living room.

The Coffee Table

The coffee table is a wonderful piece of furniture usually found in a living room of a domestic house of an office rest area. It is usually a long, low table which is usually placed in front of a sofa so as to place drinks, magazines, to rest weary feet and other items like TV remote controls so they are easily accessible when they are needed and required.

Different Shapes and Styles

They do vary in style, shape, color and price depending on the type that is suitable for the environment you had in mind. They may also incorporate storage of some kind so as to give the user a place to put things that they would like 'out of sight' but within easy reach at the same time. In social terms the idea of 'gathering around a coffee table' is meant to encourage a situation where conviviality and light conversation occur.

Historical Reference

Throughout early history there have been references to similar types of table especially in ancient Greek culture, but nothing that categorically states that there was such a thing like it. So, it is commonly thought that they did not come into use until the 1800s and so before that only such furniture as occasional tables, end tables centre tables and tea tables were used, and with the evolution of the sofa came the sofa table which in fact stood up against the back of the sofa for users to place items that they wanted to rest. The sofa table was indeed to forerunner to the coffee table.

First Coffee Tables

The very first examples were in fact designed and built in the Victorian era in Britain to have a place to put tea cups and plates when taking tea socially. They were put into wide production in the late1800s by English companies William Watt, and Collinson and Lock who designed it as a low table of approximately twenty-seven inches high.

 

Low Tables

After that they tended to be known as low tables, as Anglo-Japanese style was popular in Britain throughout the 1870s and 1880s and because of the popularity of low tables in Japanese culture, and following that there were certain types made in the style of particular eras of history such as Louis XVI or Georgian style, but there is indeed no evidence that they were used during those times so it is commonly thought that they are a late evolution in the history of living room furniture.

Coffee Tables Today

Today there are many types of coffee table, and indeed they are a popular piece of furniture for households throughout the world and they are center piece of many a living room of office and yet we forget where they started.

 

 

 

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