The carpenter who made the table

The table at the centre of the room seats twelve and weighs about eighty kilos. Manuel Correia made it — a carpenter from Albufeira, in a workshop ten minutes from here.

When we were looking for a carpenter for the project, we wanted someone local — not as an abstract principle, but because we wanted the table to have a concrete origin. So that when someone asked "who made this?", there would be an answer with a name and an address.

Manuel has his workshop on one of the streets behind the market. He works mainly on domestic furniture — kitchens, wardrobes, shelving — and takes a handful of custom projects each year. When we showed him the space and explained what we wanted, he looked at the floor for a few seconds and then said: "oak."

We didn't ask why. Later we understood — oak ages well with use, absorbs marks without hiding them, and has a weight that conveys permanence without being too heavy to move.

The table took three weeks. Manuel brought it in a van and helped position it in the centre of the room. We set the chairs around it. The three of us stood looking at it for a while.

It has a slightly irregular surface — not because Manuel didn't know how to sand it, but because we asked for it that way. We wanted the table to look used from the beginning. We wanted people to feel no hesitation about resting a cup on it or marking it with a pencil. The marks that accumulate over the coming years will tell a story.

It already has some. There's a cobalt blue watercolour stain near the left corner from the first week. There's a graphite line someone drew to test a new pencil. There's a small dent we don't know the origin of.

Manuel comes by occasionally. He sits at the table, drinks a coffee, watches the work going on around him. He hasn't made a piece yet. But it doesn't seem like he never will.