The Pentagon Table: Seltz's Steam-Bent Solid Wood Dining Table

Home / Tables

The Pentagon dining table is a piece you notice from the legs up. Instead of four straight supports, a set of steam-bent solid wood legs twist together beneath the top as though each had been wrung out like cloth — and the optional glass insert lets you look straight down into that structure. It was made by Seltz, a family furniture workshop in the village of Mittelbergheim, in the Alsace region of eastern France.

A correction to the old story

Our original 2016 post said Seltz had been established "in the 1600s". That's wrong. Most accounts of the company's history place the original workshop in the 1930s, founded by Robert Seltz in Mittelbergheim. The firm took the name Ébénisterie Seltz et Fils in 1961 and became known under his sons André and Edy Seltz, who in the 1960s ran a workshop producing fittings, kitchens, traditional seating and furniture for public and community use. The honest picture is a small family cabinetmaker with real craft depth, not a centuries-old dynasty.

The Pierre Chapo connection

What set Seltz apart was its work with the French designer Pierre Chapo. Chapo met the Seltz family at a furniture fair two years after setting up his own workshop, and the contact grew into a working association between his company and the Alsatian workshop that continued into the 1970s. Chapo is now one of the best-known names in French mid-century solid-wood furniture, and the Seltz workshop is part of that story: solid oak and elm, visible assembly joints, careful finishing and a respect for the natural character of the wood. The Pentagon table isn't credited to Chapo, but it comes from the same workshop tradition, in a more contemporary form.

What the Pentagon table is

The Pentagon table is a pentagon-shaped dining table with a base made from intertwining steam-bent solid wood legs — described in our original post as solid steamed beech, and in dealer listings of related Seltz tables as oiled beech or walnut. Steam bending is exactly what it sounds like: the timber is softened with steam and then bent to shape, which lets a maker create flowing curves in solid wood without cutting across the grain, so the legs stay strong. The range included a curved backless bench designed to follow the table's shape, and a dining chair with a contoured seat that the original review described as remarkably comfortable despite its all-wood construction. Options included a wooden lazy Susan or a glass insert that shows off the base.

The point of the design is that structure becomes decoration. A conventional table hides its engineering; the Pentagon shows it, and the twist in the legs is both the visual feature and the load-bearing part. It's a good example of what solid-wood furniture can do when the maker trusts the material.

Seltz today

This is where "updated" matters. French company records show Ébénisterie Seltz et Fils became inactive in March 2022, so a new Pentagon table is not something you can order from the workshop any more. Seltz furniture was sold through retailers such as Scan Design in Florida, and a good deal of it now circulates through vintage and design dealers — 1stDibs, Pamono, and specialist galleries sell Seltz dining tables, chairs and showcases in beech, oak and elm, including a pentagon-shaped table with walnut legs and a glass centre. I couldn't find a current new-production listing, so treat any "new" Pentagon table with caution.

The same workshop made related pieces in the same oiled solid beech — Fagus showcases and oval glass-topped coffee tables among them — so a Pentagon will sometimes turn up alongside a matching set.

If you do buy one secondhand, look at the joints where the bent legs meet the top (that's where any movement or cracking shows first), ask about the finish, and check whether the glass insert is original. Solid beech can darken with age and light, so a table with an even colour has probably been well kept.

For another example of wood bent into a structural shape, see the Wishbone chair, whose curved top rail is steam-bent from a single piece. For a modern British take on well-made timber furniture, there's Russell Pinch's Wave sideboard, and for coffee tables at the other extreme, Wendell Castle's Sizzle (wood and fibreglass shaped into organic pods) and the Bullet (eighteen clear acrylic panels).