The relation between coffee and coffee tables started long back. We might like to believe that coffee houses and cafes are modern concepts, but they existed even hundreds of years ago. Coffee or kahve was the drink of choice in the Turkish Empire as early as the 1200s. The Ottoman Empire started the tradition of coffee houses and the coffee tables we love now.

Coffee has always been the drink to share between old friends and acquaintances, a drink to bond over really. With time, the coffee table has also evolved into the same role. So whether its tea or coffee or wine, friends still bond and laugh over the smooth expanse of a coffee table.

Coffee tables got their English name once coffee came into Europe and UK through trade in Turkish goods. Records show that it was a Turkish woman who opened the first coffee house in London. It was not long before coffee and coffee tables were winning over the Brits who loved their tea.

More and more coffee houses started cropping up all over UK and Europe. The coffee table and a cup of coffee became the new social tool. With coffee costing nominal, coffee houses were the favorite hunting grounds for students, professors, business men, politician – giving birth to new ideas. It was somewhat like the Roman’s and their baths. Its effect was as radical as the effect of social networking sites on our society today.

Historians credit coffee and coffee tables for the germination of many new revolution and ideas. For instance, it was the cups of coffee over the coffee tables at Edward Lloyd’s that lead to the birth of Lloyds Bank. There are a thousand of ideas that can be credited to coffee and coffee tables in the world. Author’s have come up with their stories over coffee, friends have launched life changing campaigns over coffee tables and if Archimedes had the chance to have his cuppa he too would have screamed “’eureka, eureka” over a coffee table.

Coffee and coffee tables themselves have evolved over the years. Coffee tables started out much taller, to go with the strong straight backed chairs in use at that time. As more softer and comfortable settees came into fashion, coffee tables also became lower and more ornate than their older counter parts.

Coffee too was different those days, with fewer choices in each place. You drank the coffee that was trading into that place. Since coffee was not the social drink in homes yet, the men or women in their own gathering often enjoyed it over a coffee table. Even then, a lamp and a good book often accompanied coffee tables.

The low coffee tables in vogue today are credited to the Turkish ancestry of coffee houses. Some point the finger at the Japanese and their tea ceremony over low tables. Perhaps some traders found the design exotic and incorporated it? Even many of the colonized nations may have been responsible for the low coffee tables. It could have also been a result of lower seats of the modern sofa’s.

It took longer time for coffee and coffee table to enter the homes of the people. In America, coffee took over the market during prohibition. Since there wasn’t any competition from tea in that market, coffee and coffee tables stormed homes with great aplomb and a huge market for new designs on coffee tables opened up. Slowly they became centerpieces, rather than simply coffee tables. They evolved with the change in home décor and taste over the years. There is the wrought iron coffee table that graces the balconies in Europe and the ornate coffee table that still entertains guests in some Royal house in England or the chic steel and glass top coffee table that makes style statements at a tastefully decorated flat in New York. At some point of time though, someone will place a hot cup of coffee over those tables and enjoy it with friends and family.

Today, it is the same crowd that gathers over a cup of hot coffee around a coffee table to discuss ideas, theories, new venturous or simply catch up after long absence. There are hardly people who don’t like coffee or never been to a café or a coffee house. Chain cafes like Starbucks are now almost synonymous with the words coffee and hangout. Coffee mugs are personalized with names and start signs and wooden coffee tables sit in their place of pride in our sitting rooms, waiting for coffee and friends.