A coffee table made from a dismantled entrance portal, two centuries old.
The planks were not chosen for their age as a decorative proposition. They were chosen because they already had a life — scratches, grain variations, the compression of use — and that life does not disappear when the object changes function. It migrates.
Two surface states were produced in parallel: one sanded and polished, one left entirely raw. The question was not which finish was better. It was what the same material means when touched differently.
One version is refined. One carries every mark of its two hundred years intact. Both are the same object.