Commercial
Burl-Figured Conference Table
A large rectangular conference table with a burl-figured top and striped crossbanding, refinished from a flat amber surface to a deep, mirror-bright red-brown.
In short This project was a large rectangular conference table whose top is a field of swirling burl figure framed by a striped crossband border and a matching striped edge. In the before photograph the surface is a flat honey-amber that throws almost no reflection. In the after photograph the same figure and the same border read as a deep red-brown under a mirror-bright finish that returns the whole room — sky, ceiling, and chairs — off the top.
What the photographs show
Before. The table fills a paneled room lit by a brass chandelier, with a patterned carpet underfoot and armchairs in striped upholstery pushed back around it. The top is rectangular and large — long enough to seat a row of chairs down each side — and its surface is a honey-amber field of dense, swirling burl figure. A crossband of alternating light and dark strips runs around the field like a ribbon, repeated on the edge of the top, with a fine line of inlay between the band and the field. The surface returns almost nothing: the chandelier above it leaves no reflection, and the amber reads flat.
After. The same rectangular top, the same swirling figure, and the same striped crossband and edge, now in a deep red-brown and finished to a mirror. The photograph is taken in a glass-walled corner room over a polished concrete floor, and the top gives back the sky, the fins of the ceiling, and the outlines of the chairs standing at it. Where the before photograph showed the figure as a flat pattern, the finish now carries it — the burl has depth in it and shifts as the reflection moves across the surface.
Two honest notes about the pair
These are two different rooms, not one room before and after: the piece was photographed where it stood and then photographed again where it went. And the base is not the same in both frames — the before photograph shows a dark reddish plinth under the top, the after photograph a pale gold-toned trestle. Only the top, its figure, and its banding can be matched across the two photographs, and the description above is limited to those.
About these photographs
This entry is built from the workshop’s own photographs of the job. Everything above describes what is visible in the two frames. Nothing is asserted about the age of the table, the wood it is made from, or what it is worth.