This ONE Piece Of Furniture Is The Most Important Part Of Any Home

What makes a living space feel like a home?

Because there’s a big difference between somewhere you live and somewhere you call your home.

That word “home” has a certain weight to it, a gravity. A home is a place of significance. It’s a location where you co-exist with things that hold significance with you. That co-existence can involve family or loved ones, but certain objects help define homes too.

In fact, there are a few essential items that truly transform living spaces into HOMES.

For example, a table. Not some cheap table. Not a mass-produced thing of particle board or vinyl. I mean, a REAL table. A FAMILY table.

Every true home needs a family table.

It seems so simple. A wide flat surface and a set number of legs, but the right table can turn a simple room into the heart of your everyday life.

Family tables hold significance, more than any couch or bookshelf ever could.

My home has a tremendous family table. We inherited it from my wife’s grandmother. It’s a short, wooden kitchen table with matching chairs. It looks like something you’d find in the breakfast nook of a log cabin in Northern Canada. That table means everything to us. 

I was reminded of the significance of family tables recently when I first encountered the work of the Vosay Collection.

This company makes tables that are not to be believed. They’re breathtaking. They’re works of art. They hold meaning because every table is unique. Every table carries with it the weight of its creation.

Vosay began when Nana Baffour was visiting the city of Campos do Jordao in the Mantiqueira Mountains of Brazil. He came across an old Brazilian family that was making unbelievable furniture out of the roots of the region’s massive sucupira trees. Instantly captivated by their designs, Nana visited their sculpture studio often until they decided to collaborate together.

The result was the Vosay Collection. Their artisans take this wood — tree roots that Mother Nature shaped for decades — and passionately craft it into functional works of art. 

The resulting tables feel like natural extensions of both the trees and the living spaces they occupy. (You can see more images of the collection here.)

These tables have significance. I like that. I like that these tables take themselves seriously. They have MEANING.

Like a good family table should.

A good family table draws people to it.

That table, that meeting place draws families out of their protective shells. They let their guards down, they actually start interacting with each other.

They connect around those tables. They sit around those tables on vacation, spending summer nights watching the kids play flashlight tag or catching fireflies in jars, while the adults laugh and drink and warm themselves by the fire.

(Some of Vosay’s tables come with bio-fuel fireplace inserts, allowing you to bond around the fire — or make s'mores — without ever having to leave the camaraderie of the table.)

We bring these tables into our homes and we gather around them to share food, tell stories, do their homework, play board games. We invite people in our homes and we bond with them around these tables.

Family tables transform and transcend living spaces. 

Can you say the same thing about a couch? Or a shelf? Or a media center?

Take a serious look around your house and ask yourself, “What piece of furniture makes this place feel like more than just a hotel room?”

Chances are, it’s your family table.

Keep that in mind when you’re searching for furniture for your home.

Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to inherit your grandmother’s worn wooden table. Or maybe you’ll pursue something as one-of-a-kind and lovingly crafted as the tables from the Vosay Collection.

Whatever you do, remember that tables have the uncanny ability to turn houses into homes, more than any other piece of furniture.

In an ideal world, your family will spend decades around that table, creating memories together that will fill your lives with meaning, so, if you can, try to find something that feels worthy of the job.

There are things that you can skimp on and things you can’t.

One flimsy, brand-name shelving unit might not make much of an impact on your environment, but the right table can mean EVERYTHING. It can make your home.

Created in partnership with The Vosay Collection.