Ballerina

Ballerina holds a contradiction still. The top — parsol grey glass — reads as almost weightless, a plane of soft shadow. Beneath it, a base of black-painted wood turns on rounded lines, giving the table its weight and its balance.

The base is built from three separately shaped wooden elements, each passed through a central opening and mounted on a threaded rod that holds them in precise alignment. At the top of the rod sits an aluminium cross, to which the glass is UV-bonded — a clean joint, with no visible fitting anywhere on the table.

The name came before the explanation. A dancer at the moment of balance is doing something enormously difficult and showing none of it. That is what this table is trying to do.