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Roche Bobois (attrib.) - Round dining table in smoked glass and chromed steel - c. 1975 - France/Italy
€1,820
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You could almost imagine it as a diagram. A circle. A cross. An axis. It's all there: the basic vocabulary of a universal formal language. And yet, the work escapes the cold abstraction of the plan. It lives. It reflects. It absorbs. Everything speaks of tension: tension between lines, volumes, proportions. A measured tension, a silent choreography of counterweights. A restrained tension, contemporary in its restraint, but charged with deeper echoes, as if something of primitive modernism persisted, quietly pulsing beneath the surface.
It's not just a table. It's a response to excess. A stripped-down, almost ascetic rigor, where every line has its logic, every angle its necessity. No ornamentation. No easy solutions. And beneath this rejection of the superfluous, a magnetic density.
What strikes you first is the apparent lightness. The smoked glass top, perfectly round, seems to hover. Heavy, yes, but suspended. Nearly forty kilos are carried silently by a geometry reduced to its simplest expression: a central axis, two intersecting planes, four outstretched arms. The secret lies in the controlled paradox between what weighs and what seems weightless. Glass floats, metal disappears - and yet everything holds together. All that remains is the purest form, rigorous and uncluttered.
And therein lies the triumph of this piece: its ability to organize without imposing, to structure without constraining. Its design doesn't exclude, it brings together. Four or six people can sit around it - in an open circle, free of any prescribed hierarchy.
Everything here evokes momentum, transparency and openness. A base, a surface, and between the two, emptiness as language. Spatiality takes shape. The glass lets the light through and the structure reveals itself, whole and legible. And because it reveals, it shows what usually disappears.
The top doesn't dominate, it reveals. The base doesn't support, it composes.
Everything literally rests on this tinted surface. It doesn't freeze anything, it doesn't affirm anything absolute, it offers. It invites vision, but with a subtle density that forces us to slow down. It slightly modifies reality, brushing up against it. And seeing becomes an act, not a reflex - a task that is replayed every day, according to the sun, according to the moment.
She doesn't have a name, but the clues are numerous. First, the testimony of its first owner, who remembers buying it in a Roche Bobois store in the early 1970s. Then, under the central foot, a barely visible circular impression, marked by a brownish glue residue and five evenly-spaced micro-bubbles: silent traces of a missing label, which probably once bore a name or logo.
Everything matches. The cruciform base, its four rectangular arms (20 x 60 mm) invisibly welded to the central foot, the adjustable feet with M10 threads: all markers of the Italian selections made at the same time by Roche Bobois.
And when all these elements come together, it's easy to understand why this piece so rarely resurfaces. It belongs to that discreet network of confidential editions, made for a house at the forefront of its time, and often reserved for a select clientele. Today, there are only a handful of surviving examples on the market - and even then, in such exceptional condition.
And this is perhaps what stands out most: not only the design, but also the way it has endured. Decades have passed, with use, movement - and yet nothing has compromised its balance. The glass top is immaculate, without splinters. The base remains dense, precise, unshakeable. Nothing has been disturbed, except by the normal passage of time. A piece that has been respected and remains in near-perfect condition.
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Dimensions (cm) : 71.5 (H) x 129 (W & D)
Weight : 54.5 kg (removable tray for easy transport)
Origin and date of manufacture: Roche Bobois (attrib.) - France/Italy, circa 1973/77 (technical file available on request)
General condition: Almost excellent (9.3/10)
Rating based on our internal rating scale. Full criteria available on request via our messaging service.
Overall Condition: Near-Excellent (9.3/10) Grading based on our internal evaluation scale. Full criteria available upon request via our messaging service.
Overall Condition: Near-Excellent (9.3/10) Grading based on our internal evaluation scale. Full criteria available upon request via our messaging service.
Specifications
ConditionVery goodColorsTransparent, SilverMaterialChrome, GlassNumber of items1Height71 cmWidth129 cmDepth129 cmSigns of usageScratches
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Saint-Martin-Lestra, FranceOn Whoppah since November 2024 • 3 sales