table

This Warren McArthur side table represents the designer’s most sophisticated period of production between 1936 and 1940. Featuring a black Cafolite top—a phenolic resin surface prized for its durability and modernist character—the table rests on an anodized aluminum base of ribbed tubular elements with arched stretchers and splayed legs. The combination of structural efficiency and visual elegance epitomizes McArthur’s design vocabulary, balancing industrial rigor with refined proportion.

While the label reads 1 Park Avenue, New York City, the address signified McArthur’s prestigious headquarters and showroom, not his factory. All of his furniture was produced in Rome, New York until 1936, and in Bantam, Connecticut from 1937 until the firm’s closure. This distinction is critical to understanding McArthur’s business model: Park Avenue conferred metropolitan prestige, while the factories ensured precision in mass production.

Two examples of this table design were manufactured in stainless steel for Union Carbide in 1935–36. That unique commission, photographed on a North Shore Long Island patio for Union Carbide’s promotional materials, demonstrated the company’s new stainless steel patio frame technology. The imagery was later republished in a McArthur brochure, erroneously described as anodized aluminum. The substitution of stainless steel for the anodized aluminum tubing is unique in McArthur’s oeuvre.
The selection of this table design to be one of the 10 designs chosen from McArthur"s catalog of 600 designs for for the Union Carbide commission speaks to the quality and popular appeal of its design.