This table was part of the furniture designed by Frederick Kiesler for the New York apartment of textile designer Alma Mergentine. A 1935 drawing shows the same table with simple conical legs. It is therefore likely that the table in its present form was made between 1935 and 1936.

It is documented that Kiesler showed the Mergentine apartment to Philip Johnson and John D. Rockefeller II in 1936. It can therefore be presumed that the table was already in the apartment at that time.

Only one original example of the table was ever produced, and it is now held in a private collection.

Although Kiesler was not a commercially successful designer, he had an enormous influence on the philosophy of 20th-century design. This was largely due to his fundamental idea of pushing design beyond the limits imposed by functionalism through the concept of the spatial continuity of “endlessness”, an idea he articulated with remarkable clarity.

Kiesler’s concise statements have become memorable:
“Form does not follow function. Function follows vision. Vision follows reality.”

Kiesler was not a “voice crying in the wilderness”, but an active participant in the worlds of art and design. He was a friend, or at least an acquaintance, of many of the leading artists and intellectuals of his time, and was widely respected and admired.

Among his most important works are the design and construction of the first circular theatre in Vienna in 1924, and the design of the Film Guild Cinema in 1929, the first cinema conceived specifically as a purpose-designed film theatre.

His masterpiece is the Shrine of the Book (1959–1965), a sanctuary in Jerusalem built to house the Dead Sea Scrolls. This final project was created in collaboration with his pupil Armand Bartos.