A touch of glass for a favourite pastime

Pool tables are usually relegated to the man cave or the games room, with blame laid at a chunky aesthetic of heavy timber and green felt that often doesn’t fit into a contemporary living room.

As part of his final-year project in Industrial Design in 2003, University of South Australia student Craig Nottage set about creating a stylish, minimalist, glass and steel pool table that was still perfectly functional.

After selling a few as a sideline post-uni, he joined up with Edgar Polanco, who eventually bought out Nottage and established Elite Innovations (eliteinnovations.com.au), the world’s first and only manufacturer of glass-topped pool tables. The X1 ‘Everest’ – priced from $106,500, in a limited edition of only five a year – is the most recent design.

Like others in the range, it features a 17.5mm-thick glass playing surface finished in a patented Vitrik translucent film. This multi-layered polyurethane and fibreglass surfacing replicates the rolling resistance of felt tables.

The surface is durable and drink-proof (that spilt scotch and soda simply wipes off), but you will need to play with specially polished, matt-finish Belgian Aramith pool balls and a chromed cue ball, which are supplied along with two aluminium cues, bridge and triangle.

Standard size is a competition class eight by four feet, with a vast range of bumper colours and LED lighting options. And when the black ball is finally sunk, you can add an optional table-tennis or glass dining table top to carry on entertaining.