The Tulip Table: The Legend Behind The Design

If you are a regular follower of the most important trends in furniture designs and interior spaces, surely you have ever heard of the Tulip table. This is one of the most outstanding pieces in the legacy of the great designer Eero Saarinen and one of his most recognized creations due to the innovation it represented at the time, its aesthetic attributes, its interesting functional proposal, and its endearing originality. However, few know the history that this design hides and how it managed to win the attention and applause of the world public.

For Saarinen, the schematic way in which the tables were designed and manufactured was certainly a creative problem. He was a firm believer that designers could always find new proposals, new designs, and break schemes to offer revolutionary ways to create furniture.

With that purpose, he managed to create pieces that gave a creative twist to how designs were traditionally conceived within their categories and redefined the way of posing modernism through biomorphism, smooth lines, new structures, and materials. The Tulip table, for example, nipped the idea of the four-legged table in the bud to present, precisely, a table in the shape of a tulip, as its name implies.

The Year The Tulip Bloomed

While in Michigan, Saarinen tackled the problem of removing the four legs from his table idea to unify them into one single support that would hold the central base and the entire structure. However, it was not enough to define the design and perfect it. All industrial aspects also had to be taken into account so that the chair could be considered a product suitable for mass production.

Otherwise, it would be a great creation, but with the impossibility of making it reach the general public. It was too aerodynamic a product by the industrial standards of the time and was, therefore, scrapped.

However, as early as 1957, industrial advances and new mass-production techniques allowed the table to be launched on the market, to place it at the reach of all consumers. The reaction of the public didn't delay. Overnight, the Tulip table, also known as a pedestal table, was in every place imaginable, from modern homes to commercial premises and public access areas.

It was a real "boom", and an aggressive form of modernism to announce that it had come to stay. In fact, thanks to models like that, the catalog of modern coffee tables expanded like never before, offering a constellation of new designs and proposals never seen before, all very original.

Over time, similar models appeared and, of course, the Tulip table replica, a much more affordable model than the original, which is currently marketed by online stores such as Manhattan Home Design. At present, when we talk about the Tulip table, we can be referring to any of the models that make up the collection. There are currently options such as the black Tulip table, which is more compatible with dark and versatile color schemes. When you have one of these pieces in your home, you'll understand why it's such a legendary design and why its wonderful attributes continue to make it a favorite of millions of users around the world.