It’s All on the (Coffee) Table in My New Apartment
On my long-awaited Alex Eagle moment.
Published Apr 30, 2024 3:49 PM
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Home Front is a weekly deep dive into the rising—and returning—trends, decor, and teeniest of design details fresh on our radar. In last week’s send, Lydia, Domino’s home editor, mused if there’s such a thing as having too much stuff on your coffee table.
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Having worked at Domino for seven years, I’ve seen hundreds (if not thousands) of homes. At some point, I’m bound to forget a few. But fashion designer and creative director Alex Eagle’s London living room, featured in the pages of our Spring 2017 print issue, is seared into my memory. Specifically, her Axel Vervoordt coffee table. Now that I’m moving into a larger apartment with my boyfriend, I’m finally getting my own coffee-table-as-art moment.
On Board
What is it about this kind of setup that has stuck with me? For starters, the table’s sheer size. It can seemingly hold an entire library of books (or at least three rows of five stacks—impressive) with enough space leftover to display an XL vase, a couple tall taper candles, multiple sculptural ceramic bowls…anything and everything. Why must mine also be so big, so extra? Because it’s not just a coffee table, it’s my personal bio. It’s me showing you what I care about, where I’ve been, and how I like to spend my time when I’m at home.
Here’s all the stuff I want to plop on top of mine:
- One day, I’ll have a coffee table in every room—even the closet like stylist Courtney Favini. She once told me to diversify my book collection with titles on music, nature, philosophy, etc. “The point is that they spark conversation,” she said.
- I wouldn’t normally buy ceramics from a big-box brand—I find it’s all the more special to support an independent maker—but this off-kilter one from Crate & Barrel happens to be a spinoff of similar vessels Leanne Ford makes in her home studio.
- Right now, my coaster catchall (more on that later) holds a set of rattan ones I scored for $1 each at Housing Works in the West Village, but I’m overdue for an upgrade.
- Designer and architect Fabrizio Casiraghi once put an assortment of vintage metal coups on a client’s table so people wouldn’t have to walk away for a drink, and I thought, yes—but make it gelato focused.
- That aforementioned coaster storage? It’s this hand-carved dish I received from the brand’s founder, Leah Cumming.
- My budget is closer to the $600 range, but if money were no object, I’d add this stone and oak coffee table to my cart faster than my Café coffee maker brews a fresh pot.
- On a recent trip to Dia Beacon, I stepped inside the late Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses and felt completely at peace. With this overview of his steel creations around, I can relive that moment every day.
- When my boyfriend and I started dating, he jetted off to San Diego for two months. I gave him this candle (named for New York City’s Lower East Side neighborhood) as a reminder to hurry back to Manhattan.
- I’ve wanted to light these abnormally tall (30 inches!) taper candles ever since I saw them in Jenna Lyons’s SoHo home.