The Naked Table is “naked” of ego, a table that is symbolic of community and is at the same time a product of the local environment.

Started in 2009 by furniture designer Charles Shackleton, The Naked Table Project brings people together by making tables by hand. 

The project invites groups of about 15 participants to local workshops to make a plain, simple, contemporary family table.

Participants spend their first day assembling, smoothing, and finishing their tables with the help of furniture makers. They then visit the local woods with a professional forester to see the actual source of the lumber and to identify a replacement seedling tree.  Each workshop culminates by participants and guests gathering around the completed tables, joined to make one long 75-foot table, for a celebratory, locally grown and prepared feast.  Tables are then transported to their life in the participants’ home or chosen location.  

Naked Table workshops have since taken place with the towns of Woodstock, Vermont and Hanover, New Hampshire, schools in Vermont and Connecticut, as a Valentine’s couple’s retreat, and as a corporate teambuilding experience.  The project has been featured in The Boston Globe, Business Week, and The Irish Times, among others.

From tree…

To workshops…

To eating together around the table.

Photos courtesy Jon Gilbert Fox

To see more photos of the project, check out our Naked Table Slideshow or view the Gallery.

Get involved!  Contact us to sign up for one of our current workshops, or commission your own workshop for your community or organization.

Not available for a Naked Table event?  Buy a pre-built Naked Table for your home, made from locally-harvested Vermont Sugar Maple at the ShackletonThomas furniture workshops in Bridgewater, Vermont.  Tables are available for order at ShackletonThomas’ web store and at their showroom in Bridgewater (802-672-5175).