Jules Wabbes Squared Side Table in Solid Wengé

Jules Wabbes, side table, wengé, Belgium, circa 1961

Unique square coffee table with end grain wooden top in wengé. The wengé squares are creating a vibrant and geometric appearance in the warm color of the wood. The table is executed with two perfect squares on top of one another, held together by solid wengé legs. This table is a great example of the great craftsmanship of Jules Wabbes. The design is simplistic, yet executed in luxurious material and high quality, time-consuming techniques like the cross-cut top.

Jules Wabbes (1919-1974) was a Belgian furniture designer, architect and professor. In contrast to many of his contemporaries, he wasn't trained as a designer or architect but learned the craft of designing furniture by sheer necessity. When Wabbes was 24, he opened an antiques shop where some of the furniture was in need of restoration. Therefore, he created a small workshop where he taught himself how to restore furniture. Alongside restoration, he also started to design furniture. His work is aristocratic and modest, and characterized by a sensual use of materials and a clear, almost architectural tectonics. Wabbes developed a line and idiom of its own, averse to the playful and swinging style of many other furniture designs of the Postwar period. Wabbes, influenced by American designers such as Edward Wormley, chose to build his furniture with solid wood giving his designs not only a luxurious appearance but also honest, timeless and sophisticated aesthetics.
 

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