Piscina’s New Side Tables Make a Narrative of Empty Space

Inspired by the work of Japanese sculptor Isamu Noguchi, the Reader side tables from Natalie Shook’s Red Hook, Brooklyn, studio Piscina make a narrative of empty space, with voids destined for books. The base, formed from a single slab of burnished, unglazed clay with figurative carvings and cutouts, is topped with a round of sapele (blackened ash, bleached maple, and white oak are also available). Knobby wooden tenons on the underside of the top slot into the ceramic base to join the two materials. “As an artist, I’m driven by a specific moment in painting when color fields or brushstrokes come so close to one another, the finite space between them becomes electrified,” Shook says. “Designing furniture, I’m inspired to recreate that moment, and developed these to achieve a similar visceral charge.”