Sweetness and light in modern furniture: Tord Boontje’s Bon Bon tables December 24
There’s a popular rhyme that goes “Sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s what little girls are made of.” It seems to me that that is also what the Bon Bon Tables by Dutch-French designer Tord Boontje are made of. Not quite, of course. But they look so charming, so sweet and delicate, that it could very well be so.
I mean, just look at the illustrations printed onto the table top: there’s butterflies, flowers and more flowers of varying shapes and sizes, all looking like they were gracefully painted with a thin brush. Though bright in appearance, there are no loud, glaring colors here. Everything is smooth, elegant, delicate. If you own a café or restaurant and are going for a light, almost spring-like atmosphere, then these tables would do admirably as commercial café furniture. Boontje doesn’t seem to have matching chairs for these tables, but he does have a chair called Sweetie. That would do, I think.
There are several kinds of tables in the Bon Bon Collection (what a sweet name, maybe just as sweet as how the tables look, but in a different way):
- Oval side tables
- Round side tables
- Mirror side tables
- Round coffee tables
- Low round tables
- Low oval tables
All these vary in size and shape, but all share several characteristics in common. First, of course, is the intricate floral design. Next, their bases are made of steel and finished in either powder coated white matte or black glossy.
Certain tables in the collection have Corian table tops, Corian being the brand name of a kind of polymer building material from DuPont. Its flexibility makes it a popular choice among designers. In the Bon Bon Collection, the designs are etched onto the Corian surface through a process called dye-sublimation printing, in which the material absorbs the ink. Other pieces in the collection have tempered glass or crystal tops on which the floral designs are screen-printed.
