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# Dining table with a rotating central section at Repin's Penaty estate
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/ilia-repin-i-ego-supruga-natalia-nordman-pridumali-dlia-svoego-doma-v-poselke-kuokkala-neobychnyi-stol-kotoryi-by-pozvolial-udobno-razmestitsia-na-obed-i-ne-treboval-prisutstviia-u-zast/
- Published: 2023-06-08T15:13:42.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T18:57:10.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Architecture, Museums, Mores, People

Ilya Repin and his wife Natalia Nordman devised an unusual table for their house in the village of Kuokkala, which allowed everyone to sit down to dinner in comfort and required no servants at the feast.

This remarkable table, far ahead of its time, had two parts: a moving one and a fixed one. The moving part is the central section of the tabletop, slightly raised, mounted on an iron screw and fitted with handles that set it in motion. Each person seated at the table can turn the central section towards himself to take the dish he wants. Beneath the tabletop are drawers for cutlery and used crockery.

Natalia Nordman wrote of this table: “As soon as the idea of emancipating the servants arose, the question of the dining table came to the fore of its own accord: a table around which the diners would no longer have to endure the humiliating attendance of strangers. And so, after long trials of various systems and their improvements, there emerged a large round table, for twenty persons.”

The table was designed by Repin's friend Professor Ludomir Sventorzhetsky and made by the Finnish joiner Pekko Hanekainen in 1909\. It still stands today in the large Repin dining room of the Repin Museum-Estate “Penaty”.

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_9100@08-06-2023_18-13-42.jpg)