High Oval Garden Table w/ Painted Timber Top

A fixture in the courtyard at Chanteduc, Patricia and Walter Wells's farmhouse and cooking school in Vaison-la-Romaine, this generous oval garden table has a history as characterful as its setting. The base is a salvaged industrial metal frame — most likely repurposed from a piece of machinery — with four elegantly splayed legs joined by a cross-stretcher, all in dark, rust-patinated wrought iron. For something born of industry, it has an unexpectedly refined silhouette: the arched legs give it a lightness that belies its obvious solidity. Patricia and Walter made the table themselves, and the painted oval top — wide enough to seat six comfortably — has been remade more than once over the years. "The top has needed to be remade several times because it was weathered," Patricia recalls. "It was even metal at one point, but it was too hot!" The current painted timber version, finished in a clean off-white catches the Provençal light beautifully. The height was entirely deliberate: Patricia explains that they had searched for something at that scale, tall enough to gather a small crowd around it with ease. It would be equally at home on a terrace, in a walled garden or under a pergola — anywhere that calls for a generous, characterful surface around which people naturally want to linger.