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Furniture Design

Innovative Old-School Furniture Design: A Hygienic Hog Slaughtering Table

Pop the handles

By Rain Noe - November 16, 2018

At a local antiques market I spotted this table. While the design initially appears unremarkable, something that jumps out at you is that the top appears to be in much worse shape than the base. While the latter is clean and features straight components, the former is both battered and warped.

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The proprietor noticed my curiosity and came over to explain the table's design. She showed me these two handles sitting off to the side.

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Then she invited me to crouch down besides the table. As she pointed out, the top and the base are actually separate. The tabletops are affixed to battens that are placed outside of the aprons. Two handles on each side (in the photo here one handle is present, the other removed) slide through holes in both the batten and the base to affix the tabletop.

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"This is what a farmer and his family would use to slaughter pigs on," she explained. The drawers at front would hold butchering tools. Slaughtering pigs is a messy business, and afterwards the tabletop could be hoisted off, toted down to the creek and washed off.

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Upon reflection, I think it's likely this isn't even the original top. The farmer could, and probably did, replace it with a fresh one when the previous one became too worn. I call this a smart design.

Rain Noe

Rain Noe is a writer and industrial designer based in New York City.

3 Comments

Matt Levine

4 months ago

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Not slaughtering, Butchering. The slaughter part happens outside and the innards removed.
The pig would then be put on the table top and taken inside a processing shed to be butchered and deboned.

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Mark Thomas

5 months ago

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Fabricating provenance stories is a basic job skill of "antique" dealers.

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Peter Carrasquillo

5 months ago

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I live to find and learn about things like this.

Also, it would be perversely entertaining to explain all of this to any vegetarian or vegan friends over a dinner served on this table. Only the familiar ones that (seem to) enjoy my humor, anyway. I'm a jerk, but not that big a jerk.

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