When Miss Penny Lane and I moved into our new apartment, I decided that I needed to christen it with a new piece of furniture (yes, we would christen it that way, too). The entrance hallway looked bare; well, the whole apartment was bare, but the hallway really stood out. I have always wanted to design a table for a hallway but never had the chance, so this was exciting. Normally I would start sketching ideas until something came to me, but my excitement about making a piece for myself coupled with my ADD, I figured that might take too long. I just happened to have a great piece of Black Walnut that I really wanted to use. When I design a piece, it is usually around the types of furniture a client might already have in their home or a concrete idea of their own. After designing the piece, I would then buy wood that best works with the design. With this piece, however, I would be designing around the piece of wood.
I wanted to design and build something simple, and I was somewhat limited with just one piece of wood. What a challenge. Mother Nature needs to be appreciated in each piece of furniture I build; therefore, no stains are used, and I work with the natural beauties of the wood (knots, live edges, grains, etc). I also am a nut for what is called a Bowtie, Dutchman, or Butterfly, which is a technique typically used for keeping a piece of wood from splitting by holding the wood together, but can also be used for purely decorative purposes. For this piece, I would be using the technique for form and function.
I decided to leave a live edge (the right side of the base) on the table; this makes the piece feel alive and brings Mother Nature into the home. I cut the opposite side, giving the piece a clean feeling, as well. The butterflies on the top are the functional type, as they are holding the wood from cracking any further. The butterflies on the base do hold the wood together, but are used more in a planned way, where I cut the wood into three separate pieces and then brought them back together. Well there you go, simple huh? This piece took me about thirty hours of building and finishing, and I just love it in our hall.
4 comments:
I love that table. You may discover it missing one day when you come home. :-)
slow whistle........that's nice!
are you familiar with wormy chestnut? I used to have alot of that from my grandparents house in the Smokies I fashioned a few pieces with. Also, when I was a kid days (in my senior year of high school I had 3 periods of wood shop), I used to haunt the back of retail outlets to scavenge their wooden pallets when they were still made of white and red oak...I would pull all the nails with a wrecking bar and make massive cutting boards until everyone in my family had one.
What a cool table! You are a talented gent!
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