I went on to discover that bedside tables are one of the most neglected areas in high street furniture design. Having trawled through a vast variety of utterly uninspiring blocky oak affairs online and in stores I was just about ready to give up.
When I spotted on ebay a bedside table with a mirro
red finish. They were called Venetian but to me were quite reminiscent of the Art Deco era. They were simple elegant, roomy and practical, would go with almost any decor and wouldn't add visual bulk to the room either. Hmmm definitely an option at £125 a piece +£20 delivery. As ever delivery for heavy items is a killer on ebay but it still wasn't a bad deal at £145 per table.But having been spoiled by my search for table lamps I had come to believe that if you saw something nice retailing on ebay there was inevitably a posher cousin to be found somewhere in the real world. Just to satisfy my curiosity I started looking around.
And then I saw the Charlston range by Laura Ashley. Now that bedside table (image alongside) truly tickled every acquisitive bone in my body. Incredibly sleek with lovely curved wooden legs, it was just so sophisticated, though inevitably much pricier than its ebay cousin. At £250 a piece it was clearly beyond budget. To really rub salt in the wound it even went on sale, the week after I saw it, coming down to a tantalizing £187 a piece - low enough to make me lust uncontrollably but not enough for me to actually be able to afford it.
Life's not fair I thought! Thats the
one I really, really want - surely my true and ardent devotion has got to be worth another £40 odd to Laura Ashley. Anyhow a couple of weeks of moping and frantic searching for further discounted versions on the internet ensued. But to no avail! If anything I kept bumping into fancier and fancier versions of mirrored bedside tables. Ivory pearl interiors had this version inspired by the Barcelona Chair for an eye watering £310 a piece. Incredibly smart and with the sole aim to taunt me it had been styled with the Graham and Greene bobble lamp. Made for each other it seemed to be saying - just not for you! Anyhow I convinced myself that I preferred the Charlston one anyway so it did not matter and continued my largely futile search for a discounted Charlston or look alike.All this while my trusty and reliable Ebay version patiently hung around waiting for me to get around to the decision I was fated to make. Until finally one afternoon I happened to be browsing around the shops and lo and behold what do I see but my Ebay bedside table, I mean an identical version of it, being retailed by M&S Home, only it was priced at £199 a piece. A premium of a whopping £54 over what I was getting it at online. Instinctive shopper psychology took over instantly and I went home thrilled at having found myself a bargain and ordered the tables off ebay that very evening. I was clearly on a roll because I happened to also get £25 gift voucher from ebay that day. So great result all in all!
Every once in a while though I go around to the Laura Ashley website and wistfully look at the Charlston table. But I do always come home quite contentedly to my reliable, smart, (cheaper) ebay ones!
