Marleen Jansen's See-Saw Table Explores Mealtime Manners

Dutch designer Marleen Jansen has brought play-time to the dining room with her re-invention of the quintessential playground toy – the see-saw.

The De Tafelwip project is a fun and fanciful table that encourages excellent table manners by suspending diners in the air with the hanging possibility of a woeful outcome – if one person leaves, the other will fall!

Developed from Jansen’s dissertation ‘Being Forced Voluntarily’ (Ongedwongen moeten), the table explores the unspoken rules of sharing a meal. The see-saw table prevents one person from leaving before the other has finished, highlighting meal-time etiquette and generating a fun edge of uncertainty. One wrong move and you could go crashing to the floor!