Vdali Table

Pond

To the Cherokee, water is about more than just the flow of stories. It’s about the flow of life. “A river is described as a long man with his head in the mountains and his feet in the sea, and so they have a concept of a watershed.

In daily life, the Cherokee acknowledged the spiritual significance of their local rivers, streams, and ponds with a ritual called “going to water.” Each morning at daybreak, a party of Cherokee would be led by a healer down to a running stream, where the group would face the rising sun and immerse themselves completely in the flowing water, enacting a kind of rebirth. This ceremony of communion touched on nearly all spheres of social life. Going to water was “a part of the ritual for obtaining long life, for winning the affections of a woman, for recovering from a wasting sickness, and for calling down prosperity upon the family at each return of the new moon.”

Our pond table – “Vdali” in Cherokee – represents the simplicity and organic form of a pond that you see constantly throughout nature that conveys a feel of elegant robustness and at the same time of delicate lightness, as the top gradually decreases towards its base.