A Noguchi coffee table has recently arrived in my possession, remembered from childhood. This is a table synonymous with the modern, wrought as a biomorphic assemblage of three parts, two of wood and one of glass. It will go nicely in my minimalist/modern house one day, I thought to myself, contemplating its addition to my family of pieces with random and unknown beginnings.

The people at Herman Miller, who manufactured this table for Isamu Noguchi, the famed Japanese/American modern sculptor/ designer, are quite fond of it. Referring to the tables “timeless appeal and classic elegance”, leading me to ponder that it is perhaps the Audrey Hepburn of Coffee tables. This table has suffered from modernisms curse, of being “cheap, mass producible and photogenic” to quote Elizabeth Farrelly, writing this week in the SMH. The table has waited, bearing the weight of four potplants for twenty years, the crust on its surface had rendered the entire table top opaque, the legs dirt and grime encrusted. The design had wandered, been replicated, slid from the heady heights of modern fashion and lost into a suburban reality. It’s once friends, Eames sofas and Wegner chairs were nowhere to be seen. Sliding continents, cultures and meanings had left it washed up against a wall covered in plants, denied the fundamental need to express its gleaming transparency and fluid sculptural form.

The restoration process has been slow, the timber legs have been almost cleaned and are in good condition. The table top is however a different story. The leaching of soil and abrasion of heavy pots across the last two decades have left a milky residue and a change of texture across its once transparent table top.

However once again it has begun to express itself, commanding firstly a space for itself. Shyly, it has tucked itself into an alcove and found a friend in a classic 70’s surfboard to share story’s of curves and volumes. Also in attendance, a four of fellow travellers in the form of Breur’s S32’s are taking shape nearby. This Noguchi table displaced by consumerism has reclaimed its position according to Herman Miller as a ‘work of art and a piece of fine furniture’.