“She’s Got Legs…”

There are a variety of ways to hold up a table, desk or bench. If you’ve been looking for live edge furniture, you have no doubt seen many techniques used. I really enjoy seeing how different craftsmen finish their pieces. I like when other live edge pieces come together to form the base. The tree trunk approach makes a very massive and substantial looking table. Legs are sometimes fashioned out of roots, branches, or other slabs milled to size. And then there is the tactic of simply finishing a slice of the trunk and laying it flat in all its mass as a low table. You really can’t miss when you’re using wood as a base.

But I have a fondness for balance – the yin and yang of combining metal with wood is very appealing to me. While you can get pre-fabricated legs and bolt them on, this practice seems like too much of a short cut. I typically don’t like simple hairpin legs bolted to the bottom of a hefty slab of wood. While it can be a very contemporary, sleek, or mid-century modern look, many of the pieces I’ve seen end up looking top-heavy or unstable. Here at Arboriginals, we put a lot of ourselves into the legs as well as the tops. The bases themselves are works of art – sculptural – with a real eye for balance, synergy with the wood, and sturdiness for its functionality.

Because we handcraft the legs as well as the table tops, we are able to mix and match, adjust the design for a desired height, create the vision you have for your furniture. If we create a leg design you love, we can often adjust it to fit the height you want, giving you something truly customized.

There are some ‘rules of thumb’ for table and chair heights as seen in the chart below. You can see that even within each category there is a range. If you are buying a table think about the ideal height for your personal preference. And as always — contact us to discuss your specifics!

Typical height of furniture with legs: