HANDMADE OLD-OAK REPLICA FURNITURE

REPLICA MEDIEVAL TRESTLE TABLE handmade from ancient oak and styled around the latter half of the 13th Century. The great halls of larger houses built between the twelfth and fifteenth century served as communal areas for feasting and entertainment. It was common practice for diners to be seated on long benches or stools on one side only, facing into the room, where they could be served easily from the other side of the table. This is likely to be one of the reasons why early tables are characteristically narrower. In order to provide more room in the hall for other purposes, tables could often be dismantled and stored to one side. One way of achieving this is to employ a pair of free- standing pillars, with cruciform feet for stability, which support the detachable top, at each end. These pillars could either be left completely plain or be the subject of lavish decoration. An attractive means of decoration was to hand cut a series of ornate mouldings into an octagonal cross section. This practice can often be seen today on the crown posts of important medieval roof structures.

 The table pictured below makes full use of this idea, the inspiration for the mouldings being derived from those commonly found on architecture of the Early English period (1189-1272). At each end of the cross bars, supporting the top, are carved masks (or buckles), again a device commonly in use during the thirteenth century. The two inch thick top was made up of two old oak planks, pegged and cleated at each end. Very few medieval tables exist today, in any form. A pair of some of the earliest known can be found in the Great Hall of Penshurst Place, Kent, (open to the public) where they have been resident since the fifteenth century. If you were fortunate enough to find something of equal age and quality, suffice it to say they would be priceless