Duros Extending Dining Table with Five Chairs, South Africa, c. 1960s
Round to Oval, With a Butterfly Leaf Folded Within
A mid-century dining suite by Duros, one of South Africa’s foremost modernist furniture makers. The firm’s sculptural round-to-oval extending table is brought together with a set of five Duros dining chairs, both in the restrained Scandinavian idiom that defined the company at its peak.
The table is the centrepiece, and its defining detail is in the underframe. Four tapered legs rise through shaped apron rails and finish in rounded tips just beneath the top, so the ribbon-figured sapele surface appears to float. The mechanism is a small piece of theatre: the two halves slide apart and a butterfly leaf unfolds from within, turning a 117 cm round into a 152 cm oval. The leaf stores inside the table, so nothing needs to be kept elsewhere.
The chairs carry the same language. The rear legs sweep upward in one unbroken line to hold a gently curved, channel-stitched backrest, and the seats rest on softly sculpted teak frames above clean, tapered legs. Their original bronze-taupe vinyl, with its period sheen, plays well against the warmth of the wood.
Closed, the table seats four comfortably in a smaller dining room. Opened, it seats up to six, with a place at the head for a carver or a chair of your own.
Table restored and refinished in our workshop; chair frames gently restored, upholstery left original.
Maker Profile — Duros Furniture, Cape Town
Duros was founded in 1904 by Hyman Ospovat, a Latvian émigré who settled in Cape Town and opened his first workshop in Chapel Street, Woodstock. The name was a composite of the family name Ospovat and the word durability — a promise the furniture has largely kept.
In the 1930s the company relocated to Roeland Street, where it would remain for the better part of five decades. At its height, Duros was the most significant commercial producer of Danish Modern-influenced furniture in South Africa, offering a broad range that brought Scandinavian design sensibility — clean lines, quality materials, restrained joinery — to a local market at a time when such furniture was otherwise available only through import.
Ospovat gave the company a motto drawn from Keats: “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.”
It was an ambitious declaration for a furniture manufacturer, but one that the best Duros pieces continue to justify. The company closed in the 1980s, and its output is now actively collected as part of South Africa's mid-century design heritage.
Read more about Duros on the Vintage Club journal →
All Vintage Club pieces are carefully considered for authenticity, provenance and condition before acquisition. Restoration is undertaken in-house to the highest standard.
Maker: Duros Furniture, Cape Town
Country: South Africa
Period: c. 1960s
Materials: Table in sapele; chairs in teak with original vinyl upholstery
Dimensions: Table Ø 117 cm closed | L 152 cm extended | H 73 cm.
Chairs (5): W 50 × H 80 cm | Seat H 45 cm
Condition Report
Very good. The table has been fully restored and refinished in-house; the extension runs smoothly and the leaf opens and stores as intended. A few minor veneer chips remain along the edges of the top; they have been sealed and finished in, and are visible only on close inspection. The chair frames are structurally sound and have been gently restored. The chairs retain their original channel-stitched vinyl, in good order, with light age-related patina.
As with all authentic mid-century pieces, gentle signs of age remain and are considered part of their character.
Table and chairs are offered together as a suite.
