The Legends of the Tables: Shadows over Camelot

«The Legends of the Tables, Everything has a Story.»

This catalog was entirely made using the Affinity Suite with some Blender for supporting backgrounds. I shot the tables with my Fujifilm X100s on black cardboards and developed the images using Capture One Pro. Now back to the goods.

A while back I had this idea of bringing the most inconspicuous elements of legends to life. Artefacts that were present in decisions that turned the tides of lore. Witnesses of glory and fall of heroes. Items that were introduced to characters and accompanied them in solitude. personal Tables. Not great feasting tables. The more subtle kind. Something that’s always there when history is made but nobody gives much thought.

«The Legends of the Tables» series was born. The first score tells of the fall of Avalon with «Shadows over Camelot». A part of European legend that I’m most familiar with since childhood.

When I found pieces of the Paulownia tree and did material tests on them, I knew the time had come. The wood is durable, super light, and flame resistant. I could heat-treat them with my own stain blends, even bake-in a flexible clear-coat base powder to the pores so it would take solved pigment. Charring worked exceptionally well. I could work so precise without the whole thing going up in flames. In essence, only imagination was the limiting factor here.

Then I started writing. Building the lore around the idea. Once I understood what the tables would be in relation to the characters, creating them was another journey. Sketching out ideas, mixing stains, tests on little blocks. It had the full kit and dance. Hot staining the base, taking a layer off with the belt sander to reveal the wood grain again, then staining that with another mixture, all the way to final ceramic coat polish.

If you’re wondering why in the catalog pages everything is in German, I made them for the domestic market here. It just doesn’t make much logistical sense to ship tables all over the globe. And since each table only exists once and can never be replicated exactly again, I made that call easily.