Pillar Side Table

Name: Pillar Side Table
Brand: S.T,N.E.
Price: 341000 JPY
Availability: InStock

More than ten years ago, I bought my first wood lathe.

Looking back, I could have learned from YouTube, but the idea never occurred to me. Instead, I just kept experimenting. And that trial and error was fun—so much so that for months I was at the lathe almost every day, turning whatever I could. Even scraps of wood from the workshop became material, and I found myself looking at everything and asking, could this be turned on the lathe?

I made all sorts of things: plates and bowls, of course, but also smaller necessities. Once I wanted to play a vinyl single and realized I didn’t have an adapter. Late at night, I went straight to the lathe and turned one, and soon enough I was happily listening to “Soshite Boku wa Tohō ni Kureru.” When I was into drinking scotch by the fire, I even made glasses. Looking at a Duralex tumbler one day, I thought, that shape is rotational too! So I turned a wooden base, planed the facets, made it into a mold, and had a glassblower blow it in glass.

I also made plenty of chairs and lamps. Many of the products from that time still carry parts turned on the lathe—sometimes so many that I even joked to myself, maybe that’s a bit too much.

One day I tried turning an octagon, and to my surprise it produced something completely fresh. That shape became the TRUCK lamps T-NA5, T-NA6, and T-NA7, and even the table legs by the window at Bird.

The PILLAR SIDE TABLE grew out of that same line of exploration. I turned a stout, heavy octagon, used it as a single pedestal, and placed a stone top on it—suddenly there was a table with a presence I had never seen before.

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“Pillar” in English means column, but also a central figure or support.

This table may be short, but combined with a stone top—sometimes carrying fossils—it can evoke the feeling of a Roman column in a new form. In Italy, stone is often used for the counters in bars, and I think of that too. Sitting with a caffè lungo, setting down the glass, and feeling that small tok as it meets the stone—that, too, is a pleasure.

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