Severine Console Table

Artist Georges Seurat’s 1888 painting “Circus Sideshow” illustrates a type of entertainment offered outside the main circus tents of his day to entice spectators to purchase a ticket to the main event. These forms of public entertainment were often attended by people of different social levels because they were free.

Abner Henry used this idea of a diversity of people from different backgrounds and makeups gathering as the inspiration for the Severine Console Table. It is made up of various wood blocks in different shades that create a subtle pixelated effect that is a nod to Seurat’s style of pointillism in which tiny dots make up the whole of the composition. The legs of the table are brass to represent the slide of the trombone the entertainer on stage is holding in Seurat’s painting.

Hershberger says the furniture piece also communicates the fact that we are all different — even when we are from the same family — and that it is important that acceptance, understanding and love be at the core of how we approach one another.

“Let’s just coexist peacefully,” he says. “We all know we’re different ... yet let’s just show love and get along. That’s what that says to me, and I think it’s a powerful piece.”