EARTH TABLE (for Dogo Miyu)

A set of tables specifically designed for the library at Dogo Miyu, consisting of a large low table to go with the simple leather sofa and a smaller coffee tables beside the lounge chairs. Neither was part of the original interior plan — with the limited budget, choosing off-the-shelf furniture felt wrong, and the idea came to us by chance, from a knotted offcut we happened to notice at the corner of a woodshop.

Looking at that misshapen piece of scrap — its form seemed at once like the living, surging flow of the tree frozen solid, and at once like terrain scored across the earth — the pairing with a glossy gray cement finish came to mind at once, and we thought, "This is it." (What we actually used, though, was Mortex, a resin-based plaster material.) The plastering work was executed by ourselves, where we deliberately left the surface uneven rather than smoothing it to perfection, so its texture would sit in harmony with the wood's raw, untamed grain.

For us, it was also an attempt to condense Dogo Miyu's design philosophy into the small scale of a piece of furniture. We were feeling our way as we worked, but the result carries a character and quality fitting for the library — one of the spaces that most embodies the concept of Dogo Miyu — resonating with the carefully chosen sofas and chairs, and with the mood of the curated book selection, to give the room its own particular atmosphere.

Born from a chance encounter and a passing idea in the corner of a workshop, it has come to define the quality of that space so completely that nothing else could take its place. Guests, we're told, occasionally ask where they can buy one — but it has yet to be reproduced.