A fibre-optic table, not a table with lights in it.
Seven hundred points of light, each the polished end of a single optical fibre threaded by hand and held under mirror-black resin. Set down a glass and the sky beneath it answers. Nebula is an interactive fibre-optic table, made to order in our Dubai atelier.
Light that is carried, not light that is poured.
Most of what is sold as a glowing table is an LED table. A strip of diodes sits under clear resin or frosted acrylic, and the whole surface washes with colour — often with a remote to change it. Some light up where you touch them. They are bright, cheap to make, and they look much the same in a showroom in Dubai as in a listing shipped from anywhere.
A fibre-optic table works the other way round. The light is made once, out of sight, and carried up through hundreds of individual fibres to the surface, where each one ends as a single point. Nothing is lit behind the resin; the resin stays black, and the stars sit inside it. That is why the effect reads as depth rather than glow — and why it cannot be made quickly.
If you have seen a fibre-optic star ceiling in a home cinema or a car, you know the principle. Nebula brings that sky down to arm's length, and makes it respond.
Nebula
A square of black resin, polished to a mirror. Beneath it, fibre-optic stars in three magnitudes, and a sensing layer that answers to a glass, a palm, a fingertip.
- Dimensions
- 800 × 800 × 400 mm
- Stars
- 700, in three magnitudes
- Touch zones
- 36
- Surface
- Black resin, mirror polish
- Base
- Floating plinth · obsidian or brass
- Edition
- 25 numbered pieces
- Lead time
- From 4 weeks
Set down a glass. The sky answers.
Under the stars sits a sensing layer divided into thirty-six zones. Put a cup on the table and a ring of light opens around it. Draw a hand across the surface and the stars follow it, zone by zone, then settle back into the sky when you lift it away.
It is not a screen, and there is nothing to learn. There is no glass panel showing an image, no menu, no picture of stars: every point you see is a real fibre at a fixed place in the resin. The interaction only changes how those points behave, which is why the table still looks like a table when nobody is touching it.
By day, with the room lit, Nebula reads as a slab of polished obsidian. The stars belong to the evening.
One hundred and twenty hours, by hand.
Each sky is drawn first as its own star chart, then drilled — seven hundred points in three sizes, so that bright stars and faint ones sit at different weights, as they do overhead. Every fibre is threaded by hand, then the whole field is held in a single slow pour of black resin.
After curing, the surface goes through ten grades of abrasive and two polishing compounds until it becomes a mirror. Then the sensing layer is tuned zone by zone, and the finished table runs for a full night in the workshop before it is allowed to leave.
That is roughly a hundred and twenty hours per piece, and the reason we quote from four weeks rather than from stock. Each edition is limited to twenty-five numbered tables.
The sky on the night that mattered.
Because every star is drilled to a drawing, the drawing can be yours. A commission can carry the sky over a particular place on a particular night — a birth, a wedding, the evening a company was founded — or an emblem or a line of calligraphy written in light instead of stars.
For lounges, hotels, yachts and majlis we build to the room, not the catalogue, and work with your architect or interior designer from the first drawing.
- PersonalisationStar map, emblem, calligraphy
- Bespoke sizesUp to 3.6 m
- DeliveryUAE · KSA · Qatar · Kuwait · Bahrain · Oman
- Lead timeFrom 4 weeks
What is the difference between a fibre-optic table and an LED table?
In an LED table the light source sits under the surface and lights it from behind. In a fibre-optic table the light travels through individual fibres and appears only at their ends, as separate points set into dark resin. The first gives a glow; the second gives stars.
Is the whole table interactive, or only the lights?
The stars are fixed, the behaviour is not. Thirty-six touch zones under the surface respond to a glass, a palm or a fingertip, so the light gathers where the table is being used and rests where it is not.
Can I have a different size or my own star map?
Yes. Nebula is 800 × 800 mm as standard; bespoke pieces go up to 3.6 m. A commissioned sky, emblem or calligraphy is drawn and agreed with you before anything is drilled.
How much does it cost and how long does it take?
Nebula starts at AED 11,000. The final figure and the delivery date are confirmed in writing with the drawing, before we begin. Lead time is from four weeks, and we deliver and install across the Gulf.
Commission a Nebula.
Tell us where the table will live and whether it should carry a sky of your own — we will send the details, price and delivery time.