Illusion by Philippe Starck

“Illusion” dining table by Philippe Starck, Fiam (Italy).
Steel and bronze structure.
Molded glass top giving the illusion of a tablecloth placed on the base.

Description taken from the website of the Museum of Paris Decorative Arts:
Trained at the Camondo school, Philippe Starck has been active since the late 1970s. He asserted himself with often offbeat proposals, a kind of UFO in the world of design. He then advocated the accessibility of design to all and deployed a prolific body of work in many fields: furniture, objects, motorcycles… but also architecture and interior design. In the 1980s and 1990s, he became one of the most popular designers on the international scene.
The Illusion table from 1992 is a rare and little-known piece produced by FIAM, an Italian house specializing in glass furniture, founded in 1972 by Vittorio Livi. Its edition, planned for forty copies, apparently only resulted in about ten pieces in different colors (gray, blue and green). In the early 1990s, Starck sought archetypes (Miss Sissi lamp, bathroom, La Bohème stool, etc.). This bold table is part of this continuity. This piece is, as is often the case with Starck, tinged with humor, the traditional tablecloth being here in a rigid and transparent material, glass. Provocative, Starck owes, in part, his success to this transgression of established codes while keeping function and utility at the center of his proposal. As such, the Illusion table is exemplary of his conception of design.