When I first started working on this custom design. It was shortly after I finished building the Root Over Rock Bonsai Table, and realizing that the labor that went into that table made it a really expensive art piece. I wanted to make something along those lines that was simple, so it would be budget-friendly, and something I could sell through my made-to-order program. So instead of a carving of a root over rock, I went with four legs that don’t just go straight up. They curve outward at the bottom, pull inward through the middle, and then fork at the top like tree branches reaching up to carry the tabletop.
The base is most of the design vocabulary. Each leg is shaped from a wide, flat board and then rounded over with a thumbnail bit at the router. Where the boards join together, I will finesse the curves since the router bit won’t be able to get into those tight angles. The legs are arranged so that when you walk around the table, the silhouette keeps changing. From the front, it reads as two branching uprights. From the side, the main branch is reaching across to the adjacent trunk, which solves what could have been a stability problem and turns it into a design moment.
What I find worth pointing out is the decision to fork the legs near the top. That split does two things at once: it distributes the load across a wider area under the tabletop, and it makes the base feel more organic. It’s a structural choice that also carries the whole visual idea of the piece.
The top is kept plain on purpose; I render it as a stone top, but in reality, I will probably make it out of wood. If the top had any visual complexity, the two halves of the table would compete with each other. As it sits now, the two elements are clearly separated, which lets you read the base as its own object, like a sculpture sitting underneath a clean slab.
Overall, it’s a table with a clear idea behind it, and the idea is carried through consistently.