Matthiessen Cot / Coffee Table
Matthiessen Cot / Coffee Table
The Matthiessen began life as a cot. A hardwood x-frame that folds flat, four slings of canvas or leather belted to the rails, the whole thing built to the old campaign principle that a bed should pack and set up wherever the night finds you. It is named, like much of what we make, for a writer who traveled — Peter Matthiessen, who went to the far places and wrote them down.
It soon transformed into a coffee table - almost by accident. We added a pair of trays that rest across the slings — flat surfaces for a book, a drink, a candle — and discovered that the cot, fitted with its trays, made an uncommonly good low table. The proportions were already right: long and lean. What had been a bed for expeditions became a table for evenings at home.
It still folds. It still carries the whole vocabulary of the field — the X-frame, the slings, the bridle-leather belts doing visible work — and it can still be a cot if you want it to be, the trays lifted off and a cushion laid down. But most of them now live in living rooms, holding the small ceremonies of a day rather than the gear of a journey.
There's something in the Matthiessen that conjures a particular kind of longing — the pull of far-off places, the texture of a dream half-remembered. This is furniture that refuses to forget its origins. Even settled into an elegant room, it keeps that traveler's quality: restless, adaptable, never quite permanent. It speaks to those who carry distant lands within them.
Available as a single or as a pair. Two sizes, in any of our woods, with slings in canvas, leather, or your own material.
Materials
Wood: 26 woods from light to dark and several specialty finishes
Fabric: Canvas, Perennials or COM
Leather: Moore & Giles, Garrett or COL
English bridle leather strapping colors: black, dark chocolate, Havana, saddle, cognac and coach
Dimensions
60" L x 24" W x 17" H Trays 24" W x 20" D COM – 6 yards COL – 110 sq. ft.
76" L x 27" W x 17" H Trays 30" W x 22" D COM – 8 yards COL – 145 sq. ft.
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