Ceili: the Floor Sitting Tea Table

Ceili is a low floor table for serving and enjoying tea. Its name comes from the Irish word for gathering, but another translation for it is a group dance, which fits the ritual of unstacking the cups and plates to serve guests.

Growing up, my dad drank a lot of tea. When I was little, he would offer me a sip or two, and as I have grown older, I get my own cup when I come home and drink with him. For me, this sharing of tea has grown to represent my bond with my family. With this table, I hoped to make the warmth it brings me visible, even when we are not actively using it.

The ceramics each have a spot sized specifically to them, and are gradually decreasing in size so they are always stacked in the same order.

Materials

1. clay
2. glazes
3. 5 10' long 1" thick ash wood planks
4. floating tenons
5. sandpaper
6. wood glue
7. clamps
8. large piece of scrap wood

Tools

1. Fusion 360
2. pottery wheel
3. gas kiln
4. electric kiln
5. CNC machine
6. circular saw
7. wood planer
8. wood jointer
9. bandsaw
10. hand sander
11. domino joiner

I started my concept knowing I wanted to create a table incorporating ceramics. I decided a tea setting would be appropriate for the design, especially because I wanted the ceramics to be of varying sizes and my family is very informal in our tea drinking.

Within Fusion 360, I decided the size of the table, the number of ceramics, and in what ways I wanted the ceramics to vary. I started with a dining room table four feet wide, but settled on a low 3 foot wide floor sitting table to keep the feeling of it familial. Because the ceramics were the main focal point, I made the legs and tabletop as simple as possible, opting for wide, inset legs that kind of melted into the background.

The main point of interest with the CAD is the insets for the dishes; when not in use, the dishes stack in the middle, and their spots remain empty. Because each ceramic dish is of a different size, each indent only fits one of the dishes; this means that even when the table is not being used, anyone who might see it can imagine the scene of when it is set and surrounded by the people that match those cups and plates.

I spent 90% of my fabrication process on the ceramics. If you have not done wheel throwing before, believe me when I say it can't be rushed! Part of the reason it took so long was that I first tried making molds so I could make multiple of the same piece and try different glazes on it, but that didn't work. Another part is that I made triple the number of cups I needed and double the plates. That being said, I did have help from my fantastic pottery teacher, so all the work was not just mine.

After the pieces were thrown, I waited, trimmed them, and bisque fired them.

Because the cups were tall, I was able to do a more fun glazing process with them. I fired them in the gas kiln (cone 10) which meant I could layer glazes to get unique combinations. Because the plates were shorter, it was less viable to layer glazes on them (more glaze = more dripping = more likely to get stuck to the kiln shelves, so shorter objects need thinner glaze) so I fired them with single glazes in the electric kiln (cone 6). On a few of them, I sprayed black a little bit over the regular glaze to mimic the variety the cups would get in the gas kiln.

I chose mostly blue glazes with a few purple and green because I have access to the largest variety of blues, and because I think purple and green go nicely with it.

I used a wood planer to get all my planks to the same height, then a wood jointer to get all their sides even.

This would have been an extremely simple step if not for the indents which held the ceramics. Because of those indents, I had to measure in my CAD where on each plank a floating tenon could be placed that was away from the edges of the table and the indents, so they would not become visible when I cut the tabletop out. I had to leave enough wiggle room to ensure that I did not have to perfectly line up my CNC plan and the tenons. I then used a domino joiner to cut the indents, glued the planks together, and clamped them in both directions.

I marked where all the floating tenons were and lined up my CNC plan to not hit any of them. It first cut out my indents in many shallow sweeps, rounding their edges, and then cut out the exterior.

I used a hand router to round both sides of the tabletop so they matched the curve of the insets, then did the same to each edge of the legs. I used a hand sander to get the tabletop level, and then hand sanded within each of the grooves as the curve was too tight to use a tool.

Because the legs were quite wide, they had a lot of surface area, so I just used some strong wood glue on them and clamped them down. I measured from the exterior offset from the indents to place the legs between where each person at the table would sit. I glued the legs on upside down, clamping down a large piece of wood across all three to ensure the legs were level, received consistent pressure, and to prevent the clamps from leaving marks on the legs.

Tea is better when shared, and Ceili encourages this. The stacking of the pieces by decreasing size means to get a matching cup and plate you must unstack the others, requiring all the place settings to be layed out for one to use it.

My pottery teacher always talked about leaving your fingerprints on a piece, allowing the viewer to understand its humanity. The beauty of this table is the way it expands that concept; it explores how those handmade ceramic dishes can leave their mark on the table, and in turn represents how my family leaves their mark on it. Even when they are not there, you can clearly see their impact in the empty spots.