Design Moment: Coffee Table, circa 1947

That this simple and enduring coffee table was designed by a sculptor is not a surprise. Made with just two shapes, a freeform glass top apparently balanced on a base made of two identical pieces of curved wood, it is a sculptural piece of furniture designed by Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988). For such a minimalist piece it has a substantial backstory.

In his autobiography he describes first designing a version of the table in Hawaii where he was with Georgia O’Keeffe working on an advertisement. That was 1939 and as the second World War went on he was interned in Arizona. On his release he was surprised to see that a furniture designer who had been on that trip in Hawaii had gone on and produced the table while he was away. “I remonstrated, he said anybody could make a three-legged table,” said Noguchi. “In revenge, I made my own variant of my own table.”

That’s the one that has become a modern classic – first produced by American furniture makers Herman Miller in 1947 and then reissued in 1984. The version with an ebonised birch base is the classic – black wood giving it perhaps a more Japanese appearance – but it is available in other timbers and it was originally made in walnut, birch and, for a short while, cherry.

It’s a sturdy and durable coffee table, with the curved shape of the plate glass helping to eliminate the shin-bashing properties that make other low coffee tables so annoying. The glass top is thick at 19mm ( the glass rarely breaks) but the earliest versions were even thicker at 22mm – one of the easiest ways to spot a true original.