The trunk coffee table. Now that is making good use of space. You don’t see a lot of these types of coffee tables too often anymore. Though I have a suspicion that the trunk coffee table is having a renaissance of interest again. I remember my grandmother’s old trunk table that she had bought in India. This is many years ago. It was finely carved on all sides except of course the bottom. I would stare at the finely carved sculptures of the Taj Mahal and elephants and trees.
I loved it. It was a solid deep brown wood and heavy as iron practically. Not sure what type of wood it was made of, but that was a wonderful table. It was my first inkling of trunk coffee tables. Though of course my grandmother didn’t use it like that. With the fine carving on its table top, balancing coffee cups and such would have been tricky. Besides, it was more for decoration and storing bed linens and other family trinkets and no doubt heirlooms too.
I’ve been over to many folks home and had a look at their wood coffee table and lift top coffee tables and even their glass top coffee table and I’ve always wondered about all that space under the wooden coffee tables that is hardly put to good use. You know the space between the legs where the coffee table sits on the floor. I suppose I’m the pot calling the kettle black seeing as how I have useless space under my oak coffee table, but still it gets me thinking. We could do better with that space than we do now. I suppose living like most of us in the luxury of big homes and in the first world, space for us is not a premium. But even still I find as the years go by, the clutter just seems to creep in.
Why a trunk coffee table?
A storage trunk coffee table sure would make better use of this space. A compromise of course is the wooden coffee table that has the shelf at the bottom attached to the legs. That’s a great space to leave magazines, books, newspapers and even the odd trinket for display. But even better yet is the trunk style coffee table. Not only can you leave a whole bunch of stuff in the trunk of the coffee table, things that you wouldn’t want to put on display, like bedding.
But you can throw stuff in there without a care in the world to how it looks! Nobody is going to see it. And a traditional wooden trunk coffee table will also have a latch that you can lock. Many of the newer modern coffee tables versions offer that same feature, though it is more for visual affect as we aren’t really traveling on rail and other methods with our trunk tables as was the case many decades ago.
Many decades ago, trunks were used as traveling chests when children were off to boarding school or like my grandmother, you were traveling around other parts of the world between the two wars. Thankfully we live in more peaceful times now and the trunk coffee table is used for its dual purpose of both a classic and elegant table and for additional storage space.
Price point of a trunk coffee table
These tables are not that much more expensive than other coffee tables made of wood and in fact considering the solid wood that many of them are made of such as a pine coffee table or cherry coffee table, they are reasonably priced. Unless of course you want to go for a higher end antique trunk coffee table with leather accents and brass straps which I have seen for around twenty five hundred dollars. While you’re at it, I’ll have one too please :O) Nevertheless, other wooden trunk coffee tables can be had for a few hundred dollars on up. A great choice if you need a coffee table that also has storage capabilities and makes a great conversational piece too – that’s the trunk coffee table for you.