Origin of the Messis Dining Table.

In 2021 I was commissioned by a wonderful couple to build a custom walnut bench for their new home in Costa Mesa. Given a brief description of their wants and needs I set to work constructing this wrap around bench. Constructed using a sub plywood frame to support the main walnut finish skin with a graceful brass inlay around the entire piece were your legs wrap over the seat (customers request.) I designed this bench so that it could be transported and installed in three different pieces with plenty of scribe to tie it into the existing building.

After completing the install with many complements from the general contractors fixing up the rest of the house and the clients being throughly pleased with the completed bench they asked me if I could also now build them a family dining table to fit the bench area I had just built.

Messis Dining table with custom Walnut bench including brass inlay.

With this I couldn’t have been more happy to do for them and already having a design in my mind that I was wanting to build, this was the perfect opportunity. I had wanted to build a trestle style table because of its utilitarian design and graceful simplistic lines I needed to be careful not to design it with to much of a “country” style after all this is a house in southern California. So it needed to touch on a minimalist style with the functionality of the classic trestle style.

I had recently built my own dining table for my family and had used some proportions for the top which were working really well. Also I used breadboard joinery on the ends of the table which not only works extremely well as functional structural reinforcement keeping the top flat but also serves some unique design details such as the through dowels exposed on the top and underside and small exposed tenon on the table top edges.

-More to come in the next blog post.

Stay tuned.

Messis table top fresh out the clamps and ready to be sanded flat before starting the breadboard joinery on the ends.