Nicholas Dattner Timber Tables
by Warren McLaren, Sydney on 05.23.05
"Imagine a material so technologically advanced that it is self generating, infinitely renewable, requires no attention, maintenance or capital investment, comes in thousands of varieties, has almost infinite uses and is produced in the world's largest factory whose pollution control is so effective that the only by-product is oxygen. ......No it's not something from a science fiction, its wood." So went one of Nicholas Dattner’s ad campaigns. A unashamedly evangelical promoter of timber furniture, he offers what he modestly calls “the most beautiful tables in the world’.
Predominately made from a eucalypt, known as River Redgum, the wood is often up to 500 years old, sourced from dead trees that would become firewood, or from reclaimed aged building timbers. About 80% of construction time is by hand, using traditional mortice, tenon and dovetail joinery. These family heirloom pieces receive a hardwearing polish, that’s an emulsion of polyurethane and naturally occurring oils and waxes’. Apparently the only tables in the country that are completely hand polished. In one showroom, they exhibit a table 7.5m (25 feet) long, made from a single tree. ::Nicholas Dattner [by WM]
