The Table Series were designed to be sculptures in their own right and not made as maquettes or models for larger works. There are over three hundred pieces in this collection. These pieces are seen as an innovation in Caro’s sculptural development. They respond to his removal of the plinth earlier in the decade by relocating this more intimate work back to a pedestal following the orthodoxy of ground-based sculpture his success engendered. These pieces interact with the tables that support them and create a dialogue with the viewer as they extend precariously into their space, whilst the table becomes an integral element of the work itself.

Caro’s Table Series sculptures were intended to be relatable on a human scale, and in this way differ to his large-scale floor works. Caro introduced colour as an innovative method to unify his work, distancing himself from the traditions of ‘art history’ by using commercial flat paints. His use of colour in the Table Series was intended to be emotive, and positioned his work at a remove from Minimalism’s linear appropriation of industrial material.

H.F. Westley Smith comments on the earliest examples within the Table Series: ‘These are not grand gestures, but suggestions and terse statements, sculptural epigrams that tease us into thought. Theirs is an expression of a light spirit, of an abstraction that remains otherworldly but nevertheless ‘within easy reach’’, H.F. Westley Smith, Anthony Caro Small Sculptures (Farnham, 2010, p. 14).