The coffee table book isn’t so much motivated by literary intent, but usually serves the purpose of being a passive, yet conspicuous conversation starter and communicator of personal taste and interests. Taking this idea to the extreme, the Discommon “Wake” Coffee Table forgoes the polite pretense of the coffee table book altogether, an audacious conversation starter in the form of a $17,000 table erupting with the verve and silhouette of the yet-to-be released, Aston Martin Valkyrie.
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California-based Discommon is the “left-field” brainchild of former Oakley Advanced Product Development engineer Neil Ferrier and advanced product development designer, Jeremy Hadden. The company’s eighth Automotive Icons Series creation is their first made with walnut wood, versus the machined aluminum that has characterized the series first seven editions (the most striking being the blue hued, 2006 Ford GT edition shown below):
Creating an intricate wooden top design… not only requires prepping the block of wood in an intelligent way to prevent warping and cracking during the machining process, but also tedious hand-sanding and hand-finishing to maintain the details and curvature of the automotive body.
-DISCOMMON creator, Neil Ferrier
The table surface sits atop four machined aerospace-grade aluminum legs, hard-anodized in satin black.
Instead of “liquid metal”, the automotive expression of the Wake table seems to erupt organically from the American hardwood walnut tabletop.
Each table requires over 100 hours of effort: 30 hours of 3D CAD modeling, 30 hours of prepping and bonding the wooden block, 27 hours of CNC machining, and finally three days of sanding and finishing to create the distinctive sinuous silhouette of the Aston Martin Valkyrie in wood.
Discommon’s previous seven editions of their Automotive Icons Tables series found similar inspiration in other exemplary icons of speed, including the Ferrari F40, Ford GT, Ford GT40, Lamborghini Miura, Ferrari 250 GTO, a Heuer Monaco commissioned by Tag Heuer, and the sound barrier busting, Concorde. With tables beginning at $20,000 for full aluminum editions, and $17,000 for this latest 4-foot long piece of walnut, these conversation pieces are reserved for an exclusive set whose obsession with speed isn’t ever slowed by the speed bumps of a typical bank account.
Source: design-milk