French Side Table

The travailleuse was a French sewing table made for the evening's quiet work, drawn up close to a chair once the lamps were lit and the house had gone still. Small and tall, it lifts a shallow galleried top and a single drawer, bordered with a chevron of inlay and a checkered band, on a turned column above three splayed feet. The gallery kept the spools and pins from rolling to the floor, and someone thought this plain working thing worth inlaying like a fine piece of furniture. Sylvie would set it beside a reading chair, its drawer keeping whatever small things a day leaves behind.