The Coffee Table: An anchor for any Gracious Home

As anyone with taste and breeding instinctively knows, nothing sets the tone and reflects the character of a home more than the coffee table (and yes, dear reader, it is a “coffee table”, NOT a “cocktail table” – even when you are using it to put your cocktails on. “Cocktail Table” is a term used in homes where the décor was deliberately chosen to resemble a hotel lobby.

No, none of the clichés of Hearth or home can hold a candle to the coffee table – not even the Family Bible, as has been suggested by some of the more low-brow decorating magazines that we’ve been unfortunate enough to come across. Bibles, while occasionally useful for things like Scrabble or smoting, should be kept someplace inconspicuous. Personally, We keep ours on the very top bookshelf next to the copy of the “Dictionary of the Occult”

A coffee table gets right to the meat of things in explaining what sort of home it is: from the lowliest trailer with the scarred orange crate covered with empty beer cans, to the most tasteful rambler with a lovely blonde or Danish Modern “statement” table, one just knows where one is in the universe of taste and breeding.

Personally, we have had many coffee tables in our long and distinguished career as international trendsetters and arbiters of taste. Even in the early days, when money was “tight” and various apartments were just swarming with Bright Young Things (the party never seemed to end!) the coffee table was always Just Right.

Of course, different requirements have been needed for the various phases: for instance, at one time, a coffee table that could bear the weight of people dancing on it was a must. These days, our needs are more towards a civilized gathering place where one can display one’s stunning demitasse set or fabulous barware while discussing matters that can only be comprehended by people like us.

So it’s been an evolution, this question of coffee tables. A long hard slog through various states and stages. But it’s all been worth it because now we have the latest, most fabulous, most evolved of all coffee tables. I bring you, ladies and gentlemen, The Brown and Saltman produced, John Keal designed COFFEE TABLE!

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Note the handy shelf for your collection of coffee table books and the glass-topped section for glasses when you don’t have a coaster handy (as if that ever happened at MY house!) Underneath the glass section is a dandy storage place for your favorite periodicals.

But the most, the thing that makes this absolutely nonpareil in the pantheon of coffee tables, is this.



Yes, that’s right. It has a built-in coffee warmer! Let us state that again: It has a BUILT-IN Coffee Warmer!!!! Powered by candle, so there are no annoying cords to trip over.

We’ve been holding a series of small intimate previews of this magnificent new acquisition since it’s arrival, and the reviews have been hands-down “boffo Box-Office”! Here’s just a few:

“Once again, danlangdon.com has set a new standard for tasteful and gracious living. I don’t know how those bitches do it!”
- Catalina Vel-DuRay,
Retired Homemaker

“Fabulous. Absolutely Amazing. I’m stunned and overwhelmed by this new level synergy between form and function. And the coffee was good too!”
- Sylvia O’ Stayformore
World-Class Entertainer and Girl-About-Town

"The overall design recalls early Bauhaus with a strong element of both the Pennsyvania Dutch and Shaker traditions. The form reveals a brutalism that is chariteristic of the postwar Nihlists, with an emphasis of both texture and context. Overall, an excellent example of mid-century box case for the upper-middle class sensibility"
- LORA
Design Guru and Style Magnate


“Where’s the Baileys?”
- Midge
Beacon Hill Housewife

So there you have it. Score yet another point for tasteful homes.