Monolith Side Table: Form & Refine's Object for Three Uses

Form & Refine's Monolith Side Table is a solid oak object built to work as a side table, a low table or a step stool, depending on where a room needs it. Designed by Jonas Herman for the Danish house's Herman Studio, it takes its form from a building rather than a piece of furniture — the twin pillars of the Arc de Triomphe, reduced to something one person can lift.

A monument, at furniture scale

Herman Studio's Jonas Herman has said the piece set out to carry weight rather than disguise it: "I wanted to emphasise the weight and solidity of the wood through its robust dimensions, creating a slow and calm expression." The reference point was the Arc de Triomphe — its solid pillars, its imposing yet elegant presence — reworked at a scale a single person can carry between rooms. Form & Refine frames the result as a piece for urban spaces that need to do more than one job: sit beside a sofa as a table, stand in for a stool at a low bench, or simply function as a plinth for whatever it holds.

What holds it together

The table is solid FSC-certified European oak from top to base, finished with a matt lacquer rather than an oil or wax. Form & Refine credits its strength to what it calls a unique wood-joining technique — a construction method built to highlight, rather than disguise, the natural grain running through the timber, and to give the piece its stated "strong foundation." At 29 cm wide, 29 cm deep and 36 cm tall, and weighing 7.6 kg, it sits close to stool height and is light enough to move on its own; the joinery, not the mass, is doing the structural work. Production is based in Bosnia and Herzegovina, within the European supply chain Form & Refine builds its furniture and wooden-object range around.

Three jobs, one price

Form & Refine sells the Monolith as three uses in one object — side table, low table, step stool — and leaves the choice of role to the room rather than fixing it with a single function. Objena carries the oak edition at AUD 940. Care follows the same restraint as the design: a dry cotton cloth for daily dusting, a damp cotton cloth wrung out in clean water for marks, and nothing abrasive or solvent-based near the lacquer. Form & Refine publishes a maintenance guide for owners who eventually want to reapply the lacquer or a stain, rather than treating the finish as disposable.

Why Form & Refine keeps expanding a small catalogue

Form & Refine was founded in 2018 by Helle Herman Mortensen, Jonas Herman Pedersen and Lasse Lund Lauridsen on a shared conviction that furniture should be traceable to its material and made without excess. The Monolith sits in the same family as the house's Shoemaker Chair™ and Blueprint Chair — pieces built from solid timber, joined rather than fastened, kept in production for the wear they're built to take rather than a season's trend. It is a smaller commitment than a chair or a table, which makes it a reasonable way to bring the house's construction standard into a room without redoing the room around it. Nothing about the object is disposable by design: the finish is reapplicable rather than replaceable, the joinery is built to be repaired rather than discarded, and the oak itself is the kind of material that is meant to outlast the piece of furniture built around it.

The Monolith Side Table in oak is available through Objena at AUD 940. For the house's fuller material story — the sawmill on Funen, the joinery standards behind pieces like the Shoemaker Chair™ — read our Form & Refine house chapter.

Three questions

What is the Form & Refine Monolith Side Table made from? Solid FSC-certified European oak with a matt lacquer finish, joined using what Form & Refine describes as a unique wood-joining technique built to highlight the timber's natural grain.

What can the Monolith Side Table be used for? Form & Refine designed it as a multifunctional piece — a side table, a low table, or a step stool. It measures 29 x 29 x 36 cm and weighs 7.6 kg, light enough to move between roles.

What inspired the design? Designer Jonas Herman has said the piece was built around the Arc de Triomphe's solid pillars, aiming for "the weight and solidity of the wood through its robust dimensions, creating a slow and calm expression."