Living Room Wood Base Tables of the 1960s & 1970s

Veneers

• In the 1960s many furniture manufacturers assumed that wood would become a thing of the past in furniture making. They saw a future where all furniture would inevitably be made from plastic, including living room tables. Although many people throughout society still liked wood furniture, manufacturers decided that they would make tables that looked like wood, but were actually not. To achieve this task, manufacturers used painting techniques to make plastic appear to be wood grained, and they used veneers to cover pressed board materials. Veneers are simply very thin sheets of wood-looking substances that covered the structure.

Teak Wood

• Despite the widespread use of plastics in furniture making in the 1960s, manufacturers could not ignore the public's desire for wood and wood tables in their room designs. As a result, the most popular type of living room coffee table was Danish Modern, regardless of whether the wood received a finishing coating. In addition to the wood, Danish Modern coffee tables were not standard square, rectangular or round coffee table shapes. Instead, they curved unexpectedly and/or were crafted in more than one layer. People considered these living room tables sleek in design.

Pine Wood

• Tables made of pine achieved popularity in both the 1960s and 1970s. While many shapes of pine tabletops appeared in both decades, the late 1960s started a trend in wood living room tables that extended into the next decade. That trend included straight, thick, pine wood legs, bluntly cut to support a tabletop crafted in geometric shapes.

Natural Wood

• By the mid-70s a large part of the population turned to natural wood furniture and subdued tones for interior design. Tables were often bare of any treatment, such as varnishes or stains, and the more wood grain exposed, the better. Natural wood tables and other furniture items demonstrated a movement, for some people, toward the world of nature as a design factor in their homes. Not everyone in the 1970s embraced the natural wood trend in tables, however, as lacquered plastic furniture remained popular on the market.