Table

Designer: Josef Hoffmann

1904

Ebonized oak with white filler, boxwood inlay, and silverplated mounts

Minneapolis Institute of Art

<span>Josef Hoffmann took advantage of oak's deep grain to create a decorative effect in the surface of this table. He took four triangular layers from the same piece of wood, stained them white, then applied a thick black ink across the surface so that the white remained only visible in the grain. Then he arranged the four triangles into a square around a boxwood geometrical form at the center, creating a pattern from the oak grain’s undulations. The opposite effect is created on the legs with their grid-patterned apron. There, the wood has been chosen so that the lines of the grain seem to run up the outsides in vertical parallel