Mention the Tulip table and one name immediately comes to mind: Eero Saarinen. But who was the man behind one of the most recognisable tables of the twentieth century? Saarinen was not just a furniture designer. He was first and foremost an architect, responsible for buildings that are still studied all over the world. Knowing his story helps explain why the Tulip table has such a clean, sculptural shape, and why it still appeals almost seventy years on.
From Finland to America: a family of designers
Eero Saarinen was born in 1910 in Kirkkonummi, Finland. He grew up in a house where design was part of everyday life: his father, Eliel Saarinen, was one of the leading Finnish architects of his day and designed, among other things, Helsinki Central Station; his mother, Loja, was a sculptor and textile artist. In 1923 the family moved to the United States and settled in Michigan, where Eliel went on to lead the Cranbrook Academy of Art, one of the most influential art and architecture schools in America.
Eero studied sculpture in Paris and then architecture at Yale University, graduating in 1934. This double training, as a sculptor and as an architect, shaped all of his work: for him, any object, large or small, had to be a single, coherent form.
Cranbrook, Charles Eames and organic design
At Cranbrook Saarinen met Charles Eames, and the two formed a friendship and partnership that would change American design. In 1940 they won the Museum of Modern Art's "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" competition in New York with a series of moulded plywood seats: soft, enveloping shapes designed to follow the body rather than constrain it. It was the start of a search that Saarinen pursued for the rest of his life.
He went on to work closely with Knoll, the furniture company founded by Hans and Florence Knoll. For them he designed the Womb chair in the late 1940s, a generous shell you can curl up in, and above all the Pedestal collection, whose best-known piece is the Tulip table.
The "slum of legs" and the birth of the tulip base
Saarinen said he was bothered by what he saw under traditional tables and chairs: a tangle of legs that made rooms look cluttered and uncomfortable. He famously called it the "slum of legs". His answer was radical: a single central support that flares out towards the floor and the top, like the stem of a flower. The Pedestal table and chairs were born this way in the mid-1950s, designed to work together as one continuous whole.
The benefit is not only visual. With no legs at the corners you can sit anywhere, chairs slide in freely and you gain places at the table. We look at this in detail in our comparison pedestal table or four legs. For the full timeline of the table itself, read our history of the Tulip table.
The architect of forms that take flight
While the Tulip table was finding its way into homes, Saarinen was designing some of the boldest buildings of post-war America. Among the best known:
- General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan: a large, modern industrial campus, rigorous and full of light.
- Kresge Auditorium and MIT Chapel in Cambridge, Massachusetts: a thin shell dome and a small brick cylinder, two opposite ways of working with light.
- Gateway Arch in St. Louis: the stainless steel arch, about 190 metres tall, completed in 1965.
- TWA Flight Center at New York's JFK airport: the terminal with concrete wings that seems ready to take off.
- Dulles Airport terminal near Washington, with its great suspended roof.
These buildings speak the same language as the Tulip table: continuous curves, structures that look lighter than they are, a single gesture holding everything together. Saarinen did not live to see many of them completed: he died in 1961, aged just 51.
Why his table still feels contemporary
The secret of the Tulip's longevity lies in its simplicity: a tulip-shaped base and a top, with no decoration and no unnecessary details. That is why it works as well in a modern kitchen as in a classic dining room, in a city flat as in a holiday home. It also responds beautifully to materials: the white of Carrara marble, the black of Marquinia or the warm brown of Emperador Dark completely change the character of the same design.
If you are wondering which shape to choose, think about how you use your dining area. A round Tulip table is perfect for smaller spaces and sociable meals, while an oval Tulip table welcomes larger families and guests with the same visual lightness.
The Tulip table at Tavoli.Design
Our tables are made in the Saarinen style: they reinterpret the tulip pedestal base and pair it with natural marble or laminate tops. They are not original Knoll pieces, but a tribute to an idea of design that brings beauty and practicality together. A table designed, just as Saarinen intended, to free up the space beneath the top and make everyone sitting around it more comfortable.