Thumb your nose at those “know-it-all furniture designers” with this exotic and impractical table! Finally, an outrageous way to show off your OBSCENE WEALTH.

The issue:

Once upon a time, it was possible to show off one’s obscene wealth by purchasing ornately-decorated objects that were obviously expensive.

However, in the era of modern manufacturing, high-quality products are available to even members of the non-nobility.

If only there were a way to show off your personal decadence AND solve a common furniture-related problem (Figure 1) at the same time.

Fig. 1: This plain four-legged table is acceptable, but you might accidentally hit your knee on a table leg. Plus, it’s constraining to not be able to put a chair on the corner of the table. A central-post table could solve these issues, but those typically have large “feet” on the ground that you’ll be likely to kick accidentally. Plus, you can’t vacuum around them easily.

One common way to show that one has a ridiculous amount of wealth is to purchase something entirely impractical.

Here, we modify the common dining room table so that it will have the following features:

• Has a new and impossible-to-counterfeit feature.
• Is visually distinct from a normal table that a regular person would buy.
• Is obviously very inconvenient and/or impossible to install in a normal room.
• Is impractically difficult to move, thus showing that the owner must have servants to handle such day-to-day affairs.

In this case, the impossible-to-counterfeit feature is that the table doesn’t have any table legs—instead, it is suspended from the ceiling.

See Figures 2-5 for possible methods of accomplishing this goal.

Fig. 2: The ideal table (left) would be a slab that would float a fixed distance from the ground: this would provide the full functional tabletop and works on any surface. However, this is not possible due to the laws of physics. One option we have for realizing this floating-table future is to have a single heavy-duty pillar in the center of the table that suspends it from an overhead support beam

Fig. 3: Alternatively, the table could be suspended by wires, which are less visually obtrusive. This would be ideal, but there is a problem, as seen in Figure 4.

Fig. 4: With only two wires, the table would be prone to swinging back and forth, which would probably be incredibly annoying. Also, perhaps more severely, if you put anything heavy on the table, then the added weight would cause that side of the table to tilt down, spilling everything onto the floor. Since you’re presumably extremely rich, you could always pay a servant to lean on it and prevent it from swinging, but there’s a better solution in Figure 5.

Fig. 5: By adding more anchor points and having multiple guy-wires (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy-wire), we can minimize the swinging / tilting of the table. It is still theoretically possible to lift up the table, but this would generally not be a problem unless the table were incredibly light.

Conclusion:

Next time you have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on an aggravatingly impractical furnishing, consider the “suspended from the ceiling table”!

Discuss it with your interior decorator today.

PROS: Show your obscene wealth with an impractical and very-difficult-to-move table that requires substantial structural support that only the richest and most decadent individuals can afford.

CONS: You could theoretically decapitate yourself on one of the guy-wires. So be careful when walking near the table!