The Rivoli occupied a quiet but essential place in Eileen Gray's summer house, E.1027, the landmark 1929 residence she designed on the French Riviera. A tea table by original purpose, it reflects Gray's conviction that furniture should respond to the body, not demand the body conform to it. Two swiveling chrome-plated steel trays pivot to bring objects within reach without requiring the user to rise. The tabletop extends by raising a hinged side leaf, offering more surface when the moment calls for it and collapsing back when it does not. The frame is chrome-plated tubular steel, a material vocabulary Gray shared with the Bauhaus but deployed with a distinctly French sensibility toward comfort and lightness. Frame in chrome-plated tubular steel Two swivel trays in chrome-plated steel MDF tabletops in high-gloss lacquer: black, grey, white, or Chinese red Partially foldable top with raise-and-extend side leaf Plastic gliders in black, one height-adjustable metal glider ClassiCon has reissued the Rivoli in close fidelity to Gray's original, preserving both its mechanical wit and its formal restraint. It reads equally well beside a daybed, at the edge of an armchair, or on a terrace, exactly as Gray would have used it.
