If you are an art enthusiast, maybe it’s time to add a taxidermy sheep side table to your collection. Sound too blasphemous? Well hold your horses. It is not truly art, nor is it strictly a furniture item. The Xai side table is in fact a tribute to the famous Surrealist painter, Salvador Dali by designer Oscar Tusquets Blanca.
Dali’s 1942 painting Interpretation Project for a Stable-Library, which shows his characteristic sheep lamp-table with a telephone on top and a drawer on the side, is the inspiration behind the Xai side tables. With the help of well-known Parisian taxidermist Maison Deyrolle, who was patronized by Dali himself, twenty-one lambs were chosen from a slaughterhouse to make these cabinets.
The taxidermy lambs make up the unique structure of the Xai side tables. Circular wooden trays are secured on their backs to be used as table surface. The sliding storage units on the side are designed in the same fashion as the ones in the painting. The hooves of the lambs are replaced with ornate rococo bronze shoes.
Tusquets Blanca has been reproducing Dali’s furniture and paintings in collaboration with the Spanish company BD Barcelona Design, since 1972. One of his famous reproductions is of the artist’s 1937 sofa in the shape of lips, now housed in the Sala Mae West of the Theatre Museum in Figueres.
Although precious for their significance in the art world, these extreme furniture designs are indeed an acquired taste. Currently being displayed at the Setba Foundation in Barcelona, the limited-edition Xai furniture collection consists of twenty $50,000 white lamb side tables along with one black piece priced at $98,000.
