Though we may not realize it, the table has ancient roots. By this, it s meant that the piece of household furniture or other area furniture that we ve come to appreciate for its versatile and utilitarian nature can be traced back thousands of years, though it looks different today than it did then. Back then, it sat much lower to the ground, though all tables have a flat, horizontal surface.
Most historians ascribe the creation of what we know as the table to the always looking for a bit of comfort Egyptians. They were looking for a way to not only recline on their versions of couches but also to eat and carry out other activities while doing so. This meant that the tables they created sat low to the ground and on four stumpy legs, one at each corner.
Naturally enough, the Greeks and Romans who were always looking around for things to either copy or to copy and improve came up with their own versions of tables. The thing about those handy pieces of furniture, at least in the Roman or Greek design of them was that they tended to look more like altars than anything else. This is because they feature a thick slab holding up each end.
In this way in the East, the table carried on in various iterations (altar like or low to the ground on four short legs) for quite some time. In the West, the table slowly began to make its appearance when the first rudimentary versions appeared some time after the Romans left the island of Britain. These tables were very simple, and featured a couple of boards sitting atop a type of sawhorse or trestle.
Western civilization looked at that sort of table in a slightly different way than did people in the East, where dining or eating atop its surface was widely accepted. Usually, Westerners had no problem with placing objects such as platters of food atop their particular tables but they tended not dine around them. That began to change as the chair also began to come into its own.
Naturally enough, people began to look at the low slung versions of chairs or stools they d been sitting upon and started wondering if things might be easier if they could sit on a chair and take their meals around tables. Certainly, it became much easier to feed large numbers of people in an orderly fashion. And so, sometime in the 16th century, tables with four very thick legs that were low to the ground began to appear.
Gradually and over time, as chair heights began to increase, table legs also began to increase in reaction to the increase in height on the part of chairs. At some point, the classic table came to take on the common characteristics we know today. Nowadays, there are also all kinds and types of tables out there, including billiards and card tables, whose uses should be fairly well understood.
Today, it s highly probable that the two most common types of tables are the coffee table and the kitchen table. Certainly, they re a visible presence in almost every household. Tables that are meant for living room areas are usually lower to the ground and designed to sit attractively next to a couch, for example. Tables in the kitchen are usually higher up and more purpose designed.
Author Resource:
Annie is an expert furniture and interior design writer.
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