Over this past summer, I recreated one of my favorite iconic furniture designs from the 1960s: Bernard Holdaway's TomTom table with 6 chairs from his TomTom cardboard collection. Below is the original dining set that I referenced.
With some assistance from my dad, I gathered some two by fours, mdf board, and Ram Board and began the build. To create perfect circles and the iconic flower-shaped tabletop, we utilized Lorain County Community College's fabrication lab to CNC the pieces from my Adobe Illustrator file. Using my dad's pocket hole jig, we screwed the two halves of the tabletop together. Next, we made cylinders consisting of two circles and five two by fours each. I used the measurements from this website to get the height of the table support cylinder and the chair height. I then wrapped Ram Board around the chair bases and sketched out the shape of the chair backing. I used this piece as a tenmplate for all of the other chair backing pieces. Because the Ram Board is pretty flimsy, I doubled up and added a second layer of chair backing. The first layer of backing was wood glued and stapled into the wooden frames, while the second layer was simply glued on to recreate the seamless, smooth look of the original. After clamping with bungee cords for even pressure and trimming the excess backing, the chairs and table support were built!
After rounding the edges of the tabletop and sanding it smooth, the dining set was ready for primer and paint! Because the table was for my friends and my house, I asked them what colors we wanted. We opted for a bright orange and a hidden pop of hot pink to give our house a fun and funky feel.
Overall, I am very proud of this build! It's probably my favorite thing I've made so far. I was able to spend a lot of time with my dad over the summer as we built this, and I'm very grateful for that time. This table is definitely very "me" and I'm glad it's in my dining room now with all of our other weird stuff! If I were to make this dining set again, I'd like to shrink the diameter of the chairs just a bit so that they can be scooted in all the way to seamlessly create the flower. I would also like to find a way to further reinforce the backing of the chairs, as they are still fragile.
