The 8 Most Famous Design Tables, from the Tulip to the Noguchi

A table forgives nothing: a top, a support, and everything shows. These eight each solved the problem in their own way — a single stem, an interlocking sculpture, a shimmer of steel or four factory castors. From the dining room to the coffee table, eight definitive answers.

1. The Noguchi coffee table — Isamu Noguchi, 1944

Two identical pieces of wood interlocked into a tripod, a 19-millimetre glass top: a sculpture that accepts teacups. Noguchi considered it his finest piece of furniture — Herman Miller has produced it since 1947. See the original and its alternatives →

2. The Tulip table — Eero Saarinen, 1957

The same stem as the chair, widened to family scale: marble or laminate resting on a lacquered cast-iron foot. The « slum of legs » abolished — knees have been grateful since 1957. See the original and its alternatives →

3. The Platner table — Warren Platner, 1966

Nickel-plated steel rods welded one by one into a sheaf, setting the light shimmering as you move around them. Platner said he was after the grace of a Louis XV piece by industrial means — Knoll spent years refining it. See the original and its alternatives →

4. The LC6 — Le Corbusier, Jeanneret & Perriand, 1928

An oval-section tubular base, aviation-style, and a glass top that floats on four adjustable jacks. Designed in 1928 by the trio Le Corbusier–Jeanneret–Perriand and reissued by Cassina: the engineer's aesthetic at dinner height. See the original and its alternatives →

5. The Superellipse — Piet Hein, Bruno Mathsson & Arne Jacobsen, 1968

Neither oval nor rectangle: the superellipse, a curve the mathematician Piet Hein first drew to untangle a Stockholm roundabout. Fritz Hansen has produced it since 1968, legs taut as rigging — no one presides, everyone sees everyone. See the original and its alternatives →

6. The Eames CTW coffee table — Charles & Ray Eames, 1946

The Eameses' moulded plywood folded across three planes, hollowed top included: the coffee table to match the LCW chairs, first produced by Evans in 1946. Modesty itself — and that is why it crosses the decades. See the original and its alternatives →

7. The trestle table — Jean Prouvé, 1941

Folded sheet metal that shows its workings: Prouvé, a builder above all, designed trestles whose statics can be read at a glance. Born in the Nancy workshops during the war, it moves today from office to dining room without changing its expression. See the original and its alternatives →

8. The Tavolo con ruote — Gae Aulenti, 1980

A bevelled glass slab set on four factory castors: Aulenti, then artistic director of FontanaArte, turned the industrial trolley into a Milanese coffee table. The most frugal gesture on this list — and one of the most imitated. See the original and its alternatives →

And if you spotted it in a photo?

Every piece on this list has its own reference page on Beyit, with the original, its history and alternatives at every price. And if a piece of furniture intrigues you in a photo — an Instagram interior, a film, a period house — scan it: Beyit identifies it.