Simply put, you want to dissipate the static charge in something resistive that can handle the very short spike of high voltage easily, between a conductive surface that one touches, and the ground. There is very little energy in the discharge, even in a dramatic one.
I have used a thin strip of aluminium on the edge of my desk, connected to true ground through a 1 MOhm resistor. (Strip – wire – through-hole resistor inside heat-shrink sleeving – wire – ground.) I like to wear woolly socks during the winter, and when it gets really cold, the air becomes rather dry, and static charge just accumulates everywhere.
Whenever you sit down, the strip should be somewhere you naturally touch first before anything else. The resistor means you won't ever feel the zap when static charge is dissipated, so that's a bonus.
I like anodized aluminium for this. It's dull gray and unobtrusive, and easy to keep clean.
It is difficult to solder directly to anodized aluminium, so for best results, use a screw or bolt through the aluminium, and a lug or something to connect the grounding wire (with the resistor somewhere further down on the wire); and sand or file the anodizing off of near the bolt hole as the anodizing doesn't conduct well.
I have considered using rounded L profile as the edge of the desk, but I don't like how it looks. It would work well, though.
The 1 MOhm resistor, preferably a "high voltage resistor" that can handle say 10 kV or more, is the dissipative element. Don't confuse them with power resistors that can dissipate a lot of power as heat; there is very little power or energy here. An old large carbon resistor, maybe, or a thick film resistor. I'd definitely use heatshrink too, to make sure the static discharge doesn't bypass the resistor by arcing outside it. These static discharges have very high voltage and will arc several millimeters in air, but they don't have much energy. If you have smaller resistors, say 470kOhm, put a couple of them in series.
I'm not sure as to what the optimum resistor value really is, but basically you want it high enough to drop the entire voltage spike, but conductive (low enough resistance) that the static charge does discharge through it and doesn't find a lower-resistance path to ground elsewhere. Static table mat material itself is a big resistor with relatively high resistance. Typical floor mats are conductive, and have on the order of 1 MOhm resistor to ground. 3M SCC grounding wristband has a 1MOhm resistor on it, for example.