Maria Flap dining table

Born in Värnamo in 1907 into the fifth generation of a Swedish cabinetmaking family, Bruno Mathsson taught himself architecture and design from books — and became Sweden's most internationally significant 20th-century furniture designer. Working with bent-laminated beech and locally sourced birch, Mathsson stripped away every superfluous element of the chair and table, aiming, as he put it, "to let the body decide the form."

His drop-leaf table — most famously the "Maria" model, conceived in 1936 — folds from a slim console into a full dining table through a continuous pivoting mechanism, all without visible hardware. Mathsson's work is held in the permanent collections of MoMA New York, the Nationalmuseum Stockholm and the Röhsska Museum Gothenburg.

Dimensions (Maria-type, approximate)
Folded: H: 71 cm x W: 70 cm x D: 80 cm
Fully extended: H: 71 cm x W: 282 cm x D: 80 cm