19th c. Oval Dining Table

Six barley-twist legs and a pieced parquet top: this was somebody’s good table. Found in Avignon and dating to the 19th century, it sets a broad oval top, laid in a parquet of blocked wood, on six spiral-turned barley-twist legs joined by a low stretcher, all stripped to a soft pale tone. That spiral turning, called barley twist, was cut on a lathe in imitation of a twist of barley sugar, and the parquet top, pieced from blocks of wood rather than long planks, was always the finer way to build a table meant to be seen. Sylvie would center it in a dining room where its shape softens the space, chairs all the way around for easy, cornerless dinners.

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