To our friends and customers,
I’m excited to introduce our Wide Board Oak Table: a solid, Appalachian-grown, white-oak dining table modeled on eighteenth-century farmhouse tables and made with individual boards between seven and twelve inches wide.
Often called the “King of Hardwoods,” American white oak is dense, heavy, rot-resistant, and effortlessly beautiful. Like many of our most desirable native species, its history is one of slow recovery. Today, the tree’s biomass is growing nationally, as well as in West Virginia.
The table was inspired by our love of early American white-oak farm tables. There’s a sense of lost abundance in the huge boards they used, and a primitive repairability to their structure. There were no spray booths, polyurethanes, or veneers, and “white oak” meant white oak, rather than a named stain applied to another species. A couple hundred years later, it’s often the patina of indentations and use marks that makes these antique tables even more desirable.
Our design is an attempt to bring the past back into the present. Each tabletop is assembled from only four or five boards, each measuring seven to twelve inches wide and a full inch thick. Good boards at the upper end of that range are uncommon. Using so few allows the grain to travel across the table with unusual breadth and calm. If one’s goal is to pass down furniture, wide white oak is about as good as it gets.
The table is made by Caperton Furnitureworks in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. Each one is finished by hand with Odie’s Oil, a food-safe, solvent-free hard-wax oil, and pure raw linseed oil. Both are zero-VOC finishes. This natural finish leaves the wood feeling like wood and allows rings, scratches, and blemishes to be repaired locally with light sanding and a two-minute reapplication of oil. We believe the years will add to the table rather than diminish it.
The Wide Board Oak Table is available now in 72-, 84-, 96-, and 108-inch lengths. Because of the efficient leg placement, the two shorter sizes seat eight, while the two longer sizes seat ten. Prices begin at $2,375, with $195 white-glove delivery and assembly throughout the lower 48.
You’ll find photos below, including photos of our forthcoming White Oak Windsor Chairs. As always, we are grateful for your continued support of Roseland.
Best,
Luke Sherwin
Owner
