Italian furniture manufacturer
Putin’s endless table is decorated with gold leaf and is worth around 100,000 euros, says its builder
According to the Kremlin, the long table “does not affect the negotiations in any way”.
© Mikhail Klimentyev / Russian President Press Office / Sputnik / DPA
Not that the maker of Putin’s giant table needs any more advertising, but he still finds the attention his work from 25 years ago is attracting entertaining. He has now revealed that in an interview.
A table inspires the world. He is white, decorated, supported by mighty, almost columnar legs. And long it is. Very long. Six meters to be exact. Across this distance, first Emmanuel Macron and then Olaf Scholz negotiated war and peace in Europe. The heads of government of France and Germany on the right, on the left the Kremlin host Vladimir Putin, who, given the dimensions of his piece of furniture, seemed strangely lost as he sat there. Who builds this?
“Established a building in the Kremlin”
The answer provides the Italian newspaper “Corriere della sera”. She spoke to Renato Pologna, who built the gigantic table especially for the palace in Moscow. And not just that. “I set up an entire building in the Kremlin,” said the craftsman from the small northern Italian town of Cantù near Como. From 1995 to 1997 he expanded 7,000 square meters on two floors, including the Katharinensaal: “Furniture, floors, paneling, lighting, fireplaces, plaster ceilings, marble surfaces.” Pologna estimates the value of the table alone at around 100,000 euros.
Scholz with Putin in Moscow: all cards on the (giant) table
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The exact dimensions are six by 2.60 meters. It is made of white lacquered wood, the top is a unique piece with handcrafted decorations and gold leaf profiles, according to the furniture maker. “Some say it was made for meetings in Covid times, but the length has nothing to do with the pandemic, although useful for the purpose.”
According to Pologna, his company “The Oak” primarily supplies wealthy customers from the Middle East and Arab countries. “I delivered to sheikhs and royal families, to sultans in Malaysia. There was even an order from Gaddafi and Saddam’s family (the former dictators of Libya and Iraq, editor’s note).” But he doesn’t really want to name names – he has “signed confidentiality agreements”.
A table stimulates the imagination
That his endless table on social media for so many comments and memes the head of the company finds it amusing. “It obviously strikes a chord. I saw someone turn it into a curling rink. I guess it’s a table that inspires creativity.”
Sources: “Corriere della sera”, Twitter