BH | Studio Hambledon Marble-Top Console Table

The console table began in seventeenth-century France as a shelf fixed to the wall on carved brackets, and by the eighteenth century it often wore a marble top and stood between tall windows, in English country houses as much as French ones, where it was often called a pier table. Freed from the wall since then, it has kept the same job: a narrow surface where a room is introduced.

This one pairs a long, slim slab of bottle green marble, cut with straight edges and pale veins, with two tall hardwood panels in a warm chestnut finish. The wood is dried in a kiln before it is worked, which helps it stay straight and true. Each panel is split down the middle by a narrow gap, the edges are eased round, and metal plates fix the stone to the base. Padded feet adjust beneath, levelling it on an old or sloping floor without scratching it. Each slab of natural stone has its own pattern, and assembly is simple.

Stand it in a front hall under a round mirror, with a lamp, a bowl for keys and a tray for the mail. Behind a sofa in an open living room it gives the back of the seating a finished line and a home for a reading lamp, and in a dining room it serves as a slim buffet for candles and a pitcher. Green marble and chestnut look rich against a plain white wall and quieter in a hall painted deep green.