With the free furniture making project that you can download on this page you can make a coffee table in Mashrabiya style.

           Mashrabiya - mashrabiyeh, Meshrebiya, mushrabiyah, Moucharabieh (in the French language)).

In the picture you can see that this is a very nice piece of furniture that will surely draw attention by its beauty and sophistication. This plan is primarily intended for advanced woodworkers as it requires great precision in work, many hours spent in the workshop and extensive experience in woodworking and woodturning techniques.

 

Egyptian Mashrabiya coffee table plan
Project difficulty
Advanced, requires precision and experience
Skill level
for experienced woodworker
Level of workshop equipment
Professional (Quality hand tools, power tools and machines)
Applied woodworking joints
Dowels
Mortise and tenon joint
Round mortise and tenon joint
Haunched mortise and tenon joint (long and short shoulder)
Dimensions

W 463mm (18 1/4') x L 463mm (18 1/4') x H 392mm (15 7/16').

 

Mashrabiya work (mashrabiya style) is one of the most decorative and complex woodworking techniques. It is characteristic of Arab decorative art and was commonly used to decorate the outside (street) side of the windows, in the manufacture of furniture and for decorating various elements of the interior and exterior. It emerged at the beginning of the Islamic Period (9th and 10th centuries) in Egypt and spread further to the whole Islamic world of that time. Mashrabiya work is very similar to latticework,  however adapted to the conditions in Egypt where there are quite few high and large trees to be found. Therefore, it is difficult to get the materials for manufacturing solid wooden parts of larger dimensions, but there are enough small trees from which small parts, typical of Mashrabiya work,  can be made. Products decorated with this technique are very expensive because their making requires a lot of invested work, effort and knowledge.

 

Exploded view and parts list
Egyptian Mashrabiya coffee table - Parts list
Mashrabiya work - Parts list and assembly
Assembly drawing
Egyptian Mashrabiya coffee table - Assembly drawing

 

The plan to create this table has been inspired by an old plan from the "Amateur work" magazine which was released under the name "An Egyptian coffee table in turned lattice work". On the basis of this plan we have modeled our coffee table in 3D software, but we have done a few modifications, adjusted the metric system of units and made a brand new plan (parts drawings, assembly drawings,  parts list, exploded view) after all. All the dimensions in our plan are given in mm, and the approximate value in inches is given in brackets.

 

Download project (high resolution images)

Submitted by Ceh Jan