The white lacquered furniture decorated with gold leaf has been hijacked by countless Internet users on social networks.
The image of the gigantic oval table that kept Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron at a safe distance during a tense meeting on Ukraine has gone around the world. It is the pride of a small family business in northern Italy that claims paternity. “A table is a place where you eat, have fun or play, but also where you decide on wars or sign armistices. I hope our table brings good luck and does not lead to an escalation of war“Said in an interview with AFP Renato Pologna, CEO of the Italian furniture group OAK.
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The white lacquered piece of furniture decorated with gold leaf, six meters long, has made countless Internet users fantasize on social networks, turning it into a ping-pong table, ice dance floor or even a Leonardo fresco. da Vinci, “The Lord’s Supper“.
This table, “a unique piecewas custom-cut and delivered to the Kremlin in 1995 and was part of “the biggest order we’ve ever had“says Renato Pologna. His price ? “Ah, it was in lire at the time, a table like this would be worth around 100,000 euros today» and the total of the order «more than 20 million euros“.
“I am 100% sure of what I say”
Serene, with a small graying beard, standing straight behind his desk in his factory in Cantù near Lake Como, Renato Pologna exhibits the evidence: a photo of the table reproduced in a book on the Kremlin dating from 1999, a framed certificate signed the November 22, 1996 by the Russian president at the time, Boris Yeltsin, and above all, the detailed sketches of the object that has become cult.
“I’m 100% sure of what I’m saying“, quietly assures this 63-year-old Italian boss, commenting on the remarks of a retired Spanish cabinetmaker, Vicente Zaragoza, who claims, like him, to have delivered the table to the Kremlin, but “around 2005“. “This is a beech table from the Alps“, declared to the Spanish radio Cope this inhabitant of Alcasser near Valencia, who claims to have recognized his work by seeing it on television, without however producing proof.
“I imagine that, as in Spain they say they made a table identical to ours, they made a replica, but I don’t know.“Commented Renato Pologna, anxious to avoid any controversy. After Emmanuel Macron, it was German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, refusing like the French president to submit to a Russian anti-Covid test on his arrival in Moscow on Tuesday, who took his place at this now famous table.
Planned return to production
This work, which sits in the reception room for foreign guests, is only a small part of the work carried out by OAK in one of the Kremlin buildings: according to Renato Pologna, it was a question of furnishing and decorating approximately 7000 square meters on two floors. “Abroad, the design and quality of high Italian craftsmanship are highly valued“, he argued, explaining that his company provided furniture, floors, woodwork or even marble finishes on the walls of the Kremlin lounges.
The success of the oval table, the image of which has gone viral, has given him ideas: “with all this noise, it would be a good idea to put it back in production“. Among the customers of this company founded in the mid-1950s by the father of Renato Pologna and which has around fifty employees are sheikhs and royal families from Middle Eastern countries. Former dictators such as the Libyan Muammar Gaddafi or the Iraqi Saddam Hussein have also set their sights on OAK’s know-how.
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As for Lake Como,a fantastic place“, he is a vast reservoir of customers, “with lots of Americans, Russians, Indians and Chinese buying beautiful villas“, according to him. Among them is George Clooney, who spends at least a month there a year, but who hasn’t knocked on OAK’s door yet…yet.
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