“Trapeza” Table, by T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings and Saridis of Athens

Trapeza Table, by Terence Harold Robsjohn-Gibbings and Saridis of Athens.
Greek walnut, polished bronze.
Greece.
1960s.
49 x 55 x 92 cm (19.3 × 21.7 × 36.2 in).

It was Saridis of Athens that Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis chose when she set out to furnish her famous “Pink House” on the island of Skorpios in 1968, the private retreat acquired years earlier by Aristotle Onassis. Among the designs she selected was the collection styled Furniture of Classical Greece, a series of pieces conceived by Terence Harold Robsjohn-Gibbings in collaboration with Eleftherios and Susan Saridis. The appeal of the collection lay in its union of scholarly rigor and understated luxury : furnishings that embodied the elegance of antiquity while heralding a novel modern sensibility.

Designed as part of this collection, the Trapeza table exemplifies Robsjohn-Gibbings’s vision of a timeless, intellectually grounded modernism. Crafted from solid Greek walnut, it reinterprets the light, movable tables of classical Greece—used throughout their symposia and frequently depicted in Attic vase painting and funerary sculpture. Its design draws directly from antiquity: the form is inspired by a table (trapeza in Greek) shown on a 5th-century Attic amphora attributed to the Painter of Nikôn, where the seer Phineus, son of Agenor, sits, tormented by a harpy. The table’s bronze tripod base, with subtly tapered legs and restrained ornamentation, evokes ancient models without merely replicating them ; the legs themselves are modeled after a bronze fragment from the Archaeological Museum of Palermo, with a similar example found in the Louvre. With its polished bronze base, pared-down structure, and unadorned walnut top, the Trapeza fuses archaeological rigor with modernist clarity — resulting in a functional object distilled to its essential, harmonious proportions.

Rather than indulge in decorative pastiche or revivalist excess, Robsjohn-Gibbings sought to extract the core principles of classical design. “Gradually we are achieving a new form of clear-cut beauty based on ancient traditions of purity of line,” he wrote. “These forms are without period because pure beauty is everlasting — only materials change.” This pursuit of timeless purity and clarity was a deliberate critique of both the overwrought eclecticism of earlier styles and the cold rationalism of postwar industrial design.

In May 1961, the King and Queen of Greece attended the opening of an exhibition at the Saridis furniture factory in central Athens. Twenty-six pieces designed by Robsjohn-Gibbings were displayed alongside photographs of their ancient sources, reconstructed in Greek walnut, bronze, leather, and hand-loomed fabric. The archaeological precision with which the designs had been conceived seemed, at first glance, at odds with the designer’s modernist ideals. Yet the results were strikingly contemporary — an impression shared by both critics and the public, and affirmed by the collection’s subsequent success.

The Furniture of Classical Greece collection was the outcome of a rigorous process involving archaeological sources, notably through consultation with Gisela Richter, and traditional Greek craftsmanship carried out by the Saridis workshop, founded in 1867. Every piece was a mediation between past and present — faithful in spirit and not in style alone.

The Trapeza embodies the core ambition of the Furniture of Classical Greece collection: to reconcile archaeological knowledge, local craftsmanship, and a modernist sensibility. Neither pastiche nor replica, it reflects Robsjohn-Gibbings’s conviction that timelessness arises not solely from style, but from proportion, from craftsmanship, from purity, and intent. In this, it offers a distilled expression of his lifelong pursuit: a design language shaped by antiquity, yet firmly oriented toward the present. The presence of this furniture in interiors chosen by discerning collectors such as Estée Lauder or Doris Duke, — beyond Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis — testifies to its enduring resonance, where intellectual lineage meets material sophistication.

Sources

Todd Merrill and Julie Iovine, Modern Americana, New York, 2008 ; George Manginis, “Klismos. The revival of ancient Green furniture by T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings for Saridis of Athens”, lecture given at the Bard Graduate Center, 2025.