The Camille Dining Table, winner of the SIT Furniture Design Award’s Dining Table category, anchors a family house in Chiswick with quiet conviction. Conceived by Robert London Design under founder Robert Thake and produced by British maker Benchmark, the piece was drawn to be architecture you can gather around, not a decorative afterthought.
Shaped from solid Dorset ash, the table sets its own tempo: broad, tapering legs rise into a chamfered top that feels sculpted rather than built. The mass of timber gives the room a sense of permanence, a counterpoint to interiors that chase seasonal moods. “Furniture as architecture” was the brief, and here the idea lands with clarity.
The story’s moral is material choice. Ash is fast-growing, self-seeding, and widely available yet underused due to ash dieback. By locking the wood’s carbon into a long-life object, the table turns sustainability into something tangible: a surface witnessing decades of dinners.
The pale grain of the ash syncs with the Dinesen flooring that runs through the home’s rear extension, letting floor and furniture read as a single plane. Light skims across both, highlighting the table’s gently rounded edges and subtle joinery. The result is harmony rather than spectacle, a reminder that longevity lies in proportion as much as in materials.
Five years after its 2020 installation, the Camille Dining Table still feels current, proving that style takes care of itself when design prioritises craft, context, and conscious sourcing.
Photo Credit: Shinichi Adachi and Ollie Tomlinson
