Description

A vintage teak coffee table made by G Plan in the 1960s. This ultra cool retro coffee table is often now referred to as the ‘Mad Men’ table due to its regular appearances in the hit television series of the same name. It’s such an elegant piece of mid century furniture with its beautiful glass top revealing a magazine shelf below. The gorgeous, somewhat organically styled, sculptural legs have a fantastic look about them, inspired by design elements previously found only in Danish furniture.

British furniture manufacturing company G-Plan was launched in 1953, but its roots go back much further. In 1898, Ebenezer Gomme (1858–1931) set up a fine woodworking atelier, E. Gomme Ltd., in High Wycombe, England, a major center of British furniture manufacturing. By the early 1900s, E. Gomme had transitioned into a larger factory facility, and in 1911, his sons took the helm. The company was revered for its range of high-quality sideboards, tables, and other cabinet goods and for pioneering the concept of dining room sets, designed and made to match.

Although most of the British public reverted to traditional tastes after the war, there was a small but growing market for high-quality, modernist furniture, and G-Plan successfully spoke to this younger, more progressive audience. Through clever marketing campaigns, G-Plan set the standard for modernist, mass-market furniture in postwar Britain. G-Plan’s C Range, with an aesthetic that celebrated its machine production, was launched in 1953, and by 1957 it had become enormously popular.

By the 1960s, the Scandinavian look was sweeping international design, and British-made furniture was being outsold by Danish imports. To compete, G-Plan brought in Danish designer Ib Kofod-Larsen to create new collections in fine woods, like teak and rosewood. While these Kofod-Larsen pieces have become very collectible today, at the time, they were not well appreciated by the design community—perhaps viewed as lesser variations on the furniture available from Scandinavia. Despite the competition, G-Plan remained one of the most recognized names in furniture manufacturing in the UK through the end of the 1970s.

In nice vintage condition. We’ve had the top surfaces refinished by a professional furniture restorer. Some signs of age and use remain. As always with these vintage G Plan tables, there are some scratches to the glass. These are almost impossible to photograph. Please get in touch if you have any questions.

W137 x D51 x H43cm