Five Cricket Tables Looking for Their Next Custodians

Over the past week I’ve been sharing a series of cricket tables that have recently found their way onto my website. Some are new pieces. Some are older pieces that have accompanied me to exhibitions, open workshops and events. One appeared on the cover of Cricket Tables. Another was an early experiment with a knock-down top. All have their own story.

The obvious reason for writing about them is that they’re for sale.

But the older I get, the less convinced I am that “for sale” is really the right description.

When we buy a handmade object, we like to think we own it. Legally speaking, of course, we do. But furniture has a habit of making a mockery of our sense of permanence. Most of the pieces I admire have already outlived several owners. They have passed through countless hands, survived changing fashions, house moves, inheritances, auctions and, occasionally, some truly dreadful repairs.

The owners came and went. The furniture remained.

Viewed through that lens, ownership begins to look more like temporary custodianship.

For a period of time, a piece belongs to us. We use it, maintain it, perhaps neglect it a little, and eventually pass it on. Sometimes to family, sometimes to strangers. The object continues its journey while we quietly exit the story.

This is particularly true of vernacular furniture. Cricket tables were never intended to be precious. They were practical things, expected to earn their keep. They were dragged across floors, kicked accidentally, repaired when necessary and altered when convenient. Their history is written not only in their surfaces but in their changing shapes, worn feet and softened edges.

Many of the antique cricket tables that survive today bear the marks of generations of custodians. I find that thought strangely comforting.

Perhaps that is why I enjoy making them.

Of course, there is another way to think about all this. Rather than becoming a custodian of one of my tables, you could do what I did and make your own. There happens to be a book I can recommend. If you’d rather fast-track the process, I’ll also be teaching cricket table making at the Florida School of Woodwork in August and at the London International Woodworking Festival in October.

In the meantime, five cricket tables are looking for their next custodians.

Whether they remain in one home for fifty years or spend the next century changing hands every decade is largely out of my control. My contribution was simply to make them. What happens next is part of their story.

If you’d like to become part of that story, you’ll find them listed on the website.