Table space is often very precious, especially for smaller furniture that’s often a bit more decorative than functional. Coffee tables, for example, don’t have much space for a lot of stuff, limiting their use when it comes to work. You can place a laptop, maybe a notebook or two, and then suddenly find yourself out of a safe space for that coffee from which the table gets its name. It’s even worse when the table is a circle because there’s less surface area compared to a square tabletop. Of course, you should probably work at a desk or a larger table, but some public spaces prefer these round and more attractive designs. It doesn’t have to be an either-or situation, and this table design concept tries to make room for all the essentials without forgetting the most important thing of all: coffee.
Designer: Liza Chernova
Coffee tables are a bit of an amusing misnomer since their earliest known ancestors were made to hold tea cups rather than coffee. Today, the typical coffee tables are large and low pieces of furniture that occupy a central place in living rooms, and they’re meant to hold not only beverages of any kind but also books, remote controls, and even knickknacks. There are some coffee tables, however, that are literally what they’re called, tables with regular heights used for holding your favorite blend and maybe even working for a bit.
Things can get cramped easily with you have both drinks and work competing over a small area. It might even become precarious, as evidenced by so many anecdotes of spilled beverages over papers or, worse, laptops. This table design idea solves that problem by giving beverages a more special place that sort of puts them on a pedestal while also keeping your work safe.
Named after Russian rotary dials, Vertushka puts a similar mechanism at the service of your coffee. An arm protrudes out of and over the table, creating a safe location to place a drink away from whatever else is on the table. Plus, it also frees up space for more of your stuff instead of forcing yourself to clear out an unobstructed space around your cup. That said, that’s not the only thing that this coffee table is able to do. That “handle” can revolve around the edge, giving you more freedom where to place your beverage.
That revolving handle is actually more than just a drink holder, though. The design also includes a multi-angle lamp to shed more light on what you’re working on without taking up precious table space. In theory, this could be expanded to support a modular system for anything you need to be at arm’s reach but doesn’t need to actually be on the table. Vertushka offers that flexibility without changing the coffee table’s minimalist design substantially, letting you keep your work safe while sipping your favorite beverage.
