Naomi Elizée’s Custom-Made Coffee Table Was Her First Foray into Slow Furniture
The coffee table is created using moldable cast gypsum and takes 7 to 10 weeks to complete. Mike Ruiz Serra, also based in Brooklyn, focuses on manufacturing techniques that are both experimental and sustainable. The table gets its bone white color from a shellac finish, which allows it to still maintain a raw, natural look. “From every angle it just looks so damn cool!” Naomi says.
When?
After DM’ing Mike and landing a spot on the waitlist, Naomi got a second stroke of luck. Although she had initially expected a lead time of at least seven weeks, Mike reached out to her two weeks later to let her know that he had a completed table available. “He just said, ‘Hey, someone else can’t get one of the tables now. Can you get it this week?’ And I said, ‘Let’s do it!’” She got the table in early December 2021, and it took four people to bring it inside the apartment. Her boyfriend had been totally against purchasing it at first, but after seeing it in their apartment, he also fell in love with it. “At every angle it just feels like we’re in a museum because it feels like an art piece,” Naomi explains. “Will we be putting our drinks directly on the table? Absolutely not…. We’ll have coasters! But aside from being functional, it completely elevated the space. I feel that it also added something we were missing.”
Why and how?
In looking for extraordinary pieces, Naomi has become a fan of slow furniture. “It takes a long time to make it, you know? I think a lot of people are so used to fast furniture and being able to get it in within a week or two,” she says. “That’s very much how I was too, because when you first get an apartment, you want to just furnish it immediately. However, for special pieces like this, it’s worth the wait.” Naomi is intentional about spending her money on investment pieces, ones that she can keep for decades or resell at high value. But with the Quad Coffee Table, the most appealing aspect for her was the table’s uniqueness. “I wanted something that some haven’t seen before and is not as likely to be seen in a home,” she says.
