To cut a long story short, one of our past clients is an engineer who was recently working on the refurbishment of a bridge, not just any bridge but the Hayle Viaduct near St Ives built by Brunel 
around 1850. Some of the original timbers needed to be replaced and just before Christmas, 7no. 8"x 8" square lengths of grubby timber were delivered to the New Red workshop, Mumbles.
"Can you make me a coffee table out of these, like a big jenga table" he said? 
"Yes" says I. I always seem to say yes to jobs then work out how to do it later, it usually goes ok....
Anyway, it took 2 of us just to lift each piece, plane it square and cut to length.
It turned out the grubby lumps were a beautifully charactered oak, and wouldn't we just love to know where it was cut and who installed it....needless to say it still has a pretty unique story attached.
The table itself required zero joinery, relying on the weight of each piece to hold it together.
But kind of like the best food, if you've got the best ingredients the finished dish doesn't need to hide behind loads of culinary jiggery pokery.