A coffee table, also called a cocktail table, is a style of long, low table which is designed to be placed in front of a sofa,
to support beverages (hence the name), magazines, books (especially coffee
table books), and other small items to be used while sitting, such
as beverage coasters.
Coffee tables are usually found in the living
room or sitting room. They
are available in many different variations and prices vary from style to style.
Coffee tables may also incorporate cabinets for storage.
The most common
construction of coffee tables is out of wood, but metal coffee tables are also
popular. Typically,stainless steel or aluminum used for metal coffee tables.
The idiom "Gather
round the coffee table" is derived from the furniture piece and its
proclivity for encouraging conviviality and light conversation.
In Europe, the first
tables specifically designed as and called coffee tables, appear to have been
made in Britain during the lateVictorian era.
According to the listing
in Victorian Furniture by R. W. Symonds & B. B. Whineray and also
in The Country Life Book of English Furniture by Edward T. Joy, a table designed by E. W. Godwin in 1868 and made in large numbers by William Watt, and Collinson and Lock, is a coffee table. If this
is correct it may be one of the earliest made in Europe. Other sources,
however, list it only as "table" so this can be stated categorically.
Far from being a low table, this table was about twenty-seven inches high.
Later coffee tables were
designed as low tables and this idea may have come from the Ottoman Empire,
based on the tables in use in tea gardens. However, as the Anglo-Japanese style
was popular in Britain throughout the 1870s and 1880s and low tables were common in Japan, this seems to
be an equally likely source for the concept of a long low table.
From the late 19th
century onwards, many Teak coffee tables were subsequently made in earlier styles
due to the popularity of revivalism, so it is quite possible to find Louis
XVI stylecoffee tables or Georgian style coffee tables, but there
seems to be no evidence of a table actually made as a coffee table before this
time. Joseph Aronson writing in 1938 defines a coffee table as a, "Low wide table
now used before a sofa or couch. There is no historical precedent...,"
suggesting that coffee tables were a late development in the history of
furniture. With the increasing availability of television sets from the 1950s
onwards coffee tables really came into their own since they are low enough, even
with cups and glasses on them, not to obstruct the view of the TV.
Also, the use of similar
tables has been recorded in the ancient Greek era, following the Roman conquest
of North-East Africa.
http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_table