Today I Picked Up A Great Table Base That I Initially Thought / Hoped Was A Florence Knoll Design...But Alas, Close But No Cigar. Still, It Was Attractive Enough To Bring Home. Status: Gone Topless.

I spotted this on craigslist last night, but you know how crappy craigslist photos can fool ya...especially when you are really trying to be fooled.  Oh how I wanted this to be a Knoll table base.  The seller insisted that it is a Herman Miller base, but I find this attribution dubious.

Knoll or not, this is an amazing table base.  Just like the Knoll base it apes, each leg is a solid bar of

steel plated with chrome.  Each leg is attached to the center hollow steel post with a pair of beefy hex

screws, just like its Knoll counterpart.  One major difference in construction is the foot pads.  This

piece has floating discs where as the Knoll has immobile attached pads.

Here you can see the difference in the legs.  The Knoll legs are more delicate...if 15 lbs of chrome

plated steel can be called delicate.  But really, they are so similar.  You can see how I thought it might

be a smaller Knoll counterpart to go with my larger oval Florence Knoll dining table.  Oh, notice the

pads under the feet of my Knoll dining table?  They are needed to give a little extra height as a

Florence Knoll table like this is a little shorter than a normal dining table.

So close!  See how similar?  But again, there are some differences.  The Knoll outriggers are one

piece where as the other table has two piece welded together units.  The Knoll outriggers are attached

to a sleeve that is then attached to the center post where as the other table has the outriggers attached

directly to the center post with welds.  There may be a myriad of differences but they are both pretty

similar, bullet proof and weigh a TON (ok, 70lbs...but it feels like a Ton!)