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Pier table

Ceramics
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A pier table is a narrow console between windows, often displaying ceramics.

Detailed Definition
In the category of ceramics, pier tables stage decorative wares. In poetry, they frame domestic vistas.
Example
Example in poetry:
The pier table — placed against a pier, the wall between two windows — appears in poems about Georgian architecture and the discipline of interior arrangement; A poem about a Regency drawing room might describe the pier table: "between the windows, the table and the mirror above it doubled the view — the room extending into itself, the landscape entering at both ends"; The pier table's function — purely ornamental, a surface for a vase or a clock, its legs often gilded, its top marble or scagliola — suits poems about beautiful uselessness; In a poem about a great house's spatial logic, the pier table marks the rhythmic division of the wall: "the windows gave light, the piers gave surface — between them the room arranged its claims to order"; A verse tour of Adam interiors might pause at the pier table: designed with the room, its proportions calculated to suit the architecture above and around it; In a poem about the sale of a country house's contents, the pier table is carried out while the house stands: "the table that had served the wall for two hundred years was last seen being loaded into a van, the mirror sold separately, the relationship dissolved."
Additional Notes
The pier table — a narrow table designed to stand against the pier (the strip of wall between two windows) — was paired with the overmantel or pier glass mirror above it and typically used to display important ceramics, flowers, or sculpture. The ensemble of pier table, mirror, and ceramic garniture became one of the defining features of the formal English and French interior from the Baroque period through the Regency. In literary and poetic contexts, the pier table is almost always a marker of social aspiration and the theatrics of domestic display.
Also Known As
Console table
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