Save or Splurge : Brass and Glass Coffee Tables

I’d like to think that by the time you read this we will have had a call about the delivery of the new sofa. We won’t. It’s supposed to be here in the week ending 11 July. He thinks it will come at 6pm that day. I think it will be late. We’ll see who wins.

Anyway, the sofa, which is (hopefully) a mix of very elegant and very comfortable charcoal velvet with a button back (but not a chesterfield) and a highish leg (so there will need to be hoovering) has started me thinking about coffee tables.

Ours is a huge rustic slab of reclaimed wood. Apparently a couple of hundred years old, it looks to me like an old refectory table with the legs cut down. Or even something that someone knocked up out of some old, and very wide, floorboards. I love it. It’s perfect for resting your feet on, the children used to sit on it when they were little, and it’s big enough to hold magazines and coffee table type stuff as well as the makings of a sofa supper.

But I worry that when the new sofa comes in, that it will look somehow ungainly. A little too large for the space. And so I started looking at other coffee tables. Something a little more refined. After all the children don’t need to sit on it now. Now, it can be a thing of beauty as well as a thing of practicality.

And I find myself drawn to a mix of brass and glass. There are masses of vintage ones around at various prices. And there are modern ones too. And I look at them and think that maybe, just maybe, that is the sort of partner my new sofa will require. Otherwise it might look like a girl in a ballgown wearing wellies. Which is all well and good for Glastonbury but that is one weekend a year. The rest of the time we need a little balance.

So there they are, the only question is do I save or splurge? What would you do?

And if all these are too much here is the link to a very clever ikea hack which may yet be my solution. It’s the Vittsjo (£45) and here’s the picture, from Hunted Interior, where you can read the tutorial too. The base shelf is wood painted to look like marble, which I’m not sure about, but the rest of it looks great.

Mind you, many years ago on a trip to America, we visited the Mormon church in Salt Lake City and all the pillars there are wooden and painted to look like marble so why not?

Brass and glass goes pretty well in any interior from the masculine dark colours to a soft pink scheme. It’s stunning with blue – think teal and – brings a hint of 70s retro to a modern scheme while chiming perfectly with a more minimalist look. Start stalking ebay and vintage sites; you don’t have to buy an antique or, failing that, Rustoleum is your friend.

And I’ve included this image because the new sofa is going to look very like this one – minus the brass studs and fancy feet. Still, I may customise that ….