Tiny table

To better understand our miniature table, it helps to learn more about the life-sized tables at the time. However, with the exception of some plastered benches and bronze tripods (Fig. 7 and Fig. 8), very few pieces of Mycenaean furniture have survived, as the majority was made of perishable materials such as wood. There is, however, a series of Linear B tablets from Pylos that proves that the Mycenaeans had tables, footstools and chairs. They were made from either stone or wood, and in some rare cases marble table tops have been found. More prestigious tables could contain decorations made of stone, ivory, rock crystal or gold leaf. Apart from these elaborate inlays, no complete tables have survived.See Castleden (2005).Mycenaeans. Routledge, pp. 116-118]. Like modern tables, in Mycenaean times the top of a table was fixed on the substructure. One inventory tablet mentions the size of some tables measured in feet: six feet or nine feet. Some scholars have put forward the hypothesis that there is a simple explanation for different sizes: for a rectangular trestle table two tripods are needed in order to maintain stability. Therefore, it would be a ‘six-foot-table’. The same goes for a ‘nine-foot-table’, a superstructure resting on three tripods (Ibidem)