Cleo Baldon Dining Table Terra Furniture Co, C, 1965

Cleo Baldon teak breakfast or card table manufactured by Terra in the mid-1960s thru the mid-1970s.

An outstanding example of California Modern design by Cleo Baldon for her Los Angeles studio Terra, this 1960s dining table exemplifies Baldon’s distinctive approach to structure and material.

The table features a solid teak top over a forged wrought iron base, constructed with Baldon’s signature triangulated strut supports and precise hand-forged joinery. The contrast between the blackened iron and the warm teak surface reflects her architectural sensibility — a design language rooted in clarity, balance, and craftsmanship.

Cleo Baldon’s work for Terra became an integral part of postwar Southern California modernism, furnishing the terraces, lanais, and poolside interiors of many of the era’s most notable homes. She even developed a custom barstool design for Dean Martin’s Palm Springs residence, a piece later included in Terra’s production catalog. Her furniture was admired for combining industrial strength with natural materials, resulting in a modern aesthetic that felt equally suited to indoor and outdoor living.

While widely imitated by other manufacturers, Terra’s originals remain distinguished by their hand-forged details and balanced proportions — qualities that define this piece.

Condition: Excellent vintage condition; light wear consistent with age.
Dimensions: (iH. 27.5" W. 43", D. 34")
Provenance: Terra, Los Angeles, 1960/70s.

The wrought iron table base is lacquered in black with fumed oak runners.

A variant of one of her chairs was featured in the California design/ nine exhibitions at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1965.

Cleo Baldon was instrumental in promoting the swimming pool culture of Southern California and developed the infinity pool.

Her furniture is beautifully crafted both in the framing and the upholstery.

According to conversations with my partner she knew of five companies that copied her designs.

The table is in good condition.

Chairs are not included but are available in separate listings.

In addition we have four more matched Villa armchairs being restored.

Cleo Baldon formed the partnership of Galper-Baldon Associates, a landscape architectural design firm, with Sid Grapher. Baldon oversaw virtually all the projects for Galper-Baldon Associates, with the exception of landscape plantings.[2] In 1985, Baldon told the Los Angeles Times that "I don't understand plants."[2] Her partner Sid Galper was the horticulturist. Baldon designed over 3,000 swimming pools in Southern California and held a design patent for the contour spa with ergonomic underwater seating. She has been credited with the development of the lap pool, which she claimed to have introduced to California in 1970.[1]

Aside from her architectural work, Baldon designed furniture and formed the California company Terra with Galper-Baldon partner Sid Galper. The company manufactured and sold quality outdoor furniture.[2]

Baldon never approached a furniture manufacturer with designs. She was too busy for that. But she happened to do a house for a client who had a manufacturer friend, and in the early 1960s she began supplying designs to the firm.

They were largely upholstered-seating designs, and Baldon believes that she was influenced by the outdoor trappings of the West--by saddles and cowboy boots.

(Some of her cushions were attached to chairs with straps like those that fasten a saddle onto a horse.) She also acknowledges some influence from the Mission-style chairs that she remembers from an aunt’s home.

In 1965 she and Galper founded the Terra company.

The idea was to sell a line of quality outdoor furniture “because there was nothing but Brown Jordan to put in the yard.”

That was not quite how things turned out, however, because Baldon introduced a line that sold phenomenally well.

What she did was to turn the metal legs and struts at an angle, so that instead of the flat edge being presented to one’s eye, the right angle at the corner is what’s noticed first.

“It’s more sculptural; it gives you another dimension. I’ve only seen it once anywhere else--in the grilles of a medieval house in Verona.”

Another successful Terra line is oak furniture coated with polyurethane.

“The oak keeps moving under it,” Baldon says. “Maybe that’s why the Druids favored oak--because the material is never dead. Cut it up and it wiggles in the night.”