An Ode to Our Comrade, The Picnic Table

I’d like to dissect one of the greatest pieces of furniture design: the North American picnic table. Its geometry, perfect. Its presence, ubiquitous. Its service, priceless.

One cannot own a picnic table. Sure, you can buy a picnic table kit or purchase the planks needed to construct one from a blueprint. You can even be in possession of one. You can have a picnic table on your property. But once those planks of wood are assembled into the slotted tabletop with built-in benches, that piece of outdoor furniture belongs to the people.

Of course, we have a well-established and orderly structure for the use of a picnic table. Staking claim is simple and universally accepted. Other than the obvious move of sitting on the benches to signify use to other potential parties, all one needs to secure a claim is a tablecloth. A picnic basket aesthetically rounds out the claim, but is not necessary. Without the tablecloth, the picnic table is open to all in the immediate vicinity.

There are a few reasons why a picnic table is embedded with such an orderly socialist understanding in our culture. Firstly, its design. It is usually made of the most readily available lumber type in North America, either 2x6 or 2x4 construction-grade softwood. This can be acquired at any lumber yard. Add a few nails or screws, a saw to cut, and that’s it. Similar to the beauty of a bicycle or a sailing yacht, its aesthetic is whittled down to its function. Sure, like a yacht, you can jazz up a few details. Maybe a chamfered corner or a stylized narrowing cut of the A-frame support beam for the benches. But every piece on the picnic table is there because it needs to be there.

The second reason, and probably the most important, though I’m a designer so second reason, is its widespread use throughout our provincial and national parks, rest stops, as well as industry and commercial common areas. Look behind a large industrial park or across from your local insurance midrise and you can bet there is a wooden picnic table barely holding together, considered sacred to Sheryl from Accounting on the fifth floor.

Lastly, and like all things with staying power, the legend of the wooden picnic table continues to feed itself through our collective memory of use. Like a yellow school bus, an architect’s lamp, or a bag of milk (Ontario readers only), through their staying power and subconscious ever-presence, especially in youth, their forms are simply correct, even if they could have easily been any of the other many forms in their respective subcategories of object. When seeing a picnic table, it can bring you back to an event or a feeling. The aesthetic has value beyond material.

It is not precious, and that is precisely its strength. It asks nothing of you but to sit, to gather, to share space for a moment. And when you leave, it waits patiently for the next group, unchanged and unbothered.